Nintendo Wii Injury Reports Growing in Severity

Reports of injuries associated with the Nintendo Wii appear to be growing in severity as more peripherals have been introduced for the popular game system, requiring users to be more physical.

According to a letter published in the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Karen Eley of Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust in the United Kingdom, details a serious foot injury sustained by a 14-year-old girl while playing the Wii. The girl fell off of her Wii Fit balance board and suffered a fractured foot.

The incident is just one of a growing number of injuries connected to the Wii, which have included head injuries, dislocated bones and even at least one case of traumatic hemothorax, which involved bleeding in the space between the chest wall and the lung.

Many of the more severe injuries are related to use of the Wii Fit balance board, which rests two inches off the ground and requires users to quickly adjust their balance while standing on the board to play certain video games. Most commonly, users suffer what doctors call “Wii-knee” which is caused by frequent bending at the knee while using the balance board. In some cases, the injuries have involved the kneecap becoming dislocated. 

The injuries are not restricted to use by the balance board. The standard Nintendo Wii controller, a wireless remote that is sensitive to hand movements, has been associated with injuries being called Wii-itis by doctors and users.

As early as 2008, doctors warned about the risk of Nintendo Wii injuries, indicating that they were seeing an alarming number of new injuries by players of the Wii. Most of the injuries were associated with stretched or torn tendons, similar to tennis elbow. Doctors estimated in 2008 that the Wii put an average of 10 users in the hospital every week.

One of the problems, experts say, is that people using the Wii often do not approach it the same way they would normal physical exercise. They do not stretch first and often play for extended periods of time. Stretching before playing and limiting Wii play time to sessions comparable to doing actual exercise could eliminate many injuries, doctors say.