Dangerous Games: at least 200 deaths in ten years in the playground

The choking game and its derivatives led to the death of at least 200 children since 1995, but this figure is well below the reality is certainly, warning Magali Duwelz, president of the Association SOS Benjamin, named in tribute to his son found hanged in ten years within the walls of his college.
The choking game is by far the best known and practiced dangerous games that would engage half of college students and schoolchildren in elementary school.

Experience is generally unique, but some may repeat several times a day and only to the particular occurrence of a tragedy.

Coma, the game of the sternum, sudden death, the Indian Ocean, the game of tomato ... are among some 90 variations of this game, all of which are to cause strangulation, told Reuters Health Dr. Jean Lavaud, pediatrician-intensivist, head of pediatric Samu Hospital Necker-Enfants Malades (Paris, AP-HP, XVth district) and chairman of the National Committee on Children.

"These games have always existed, but they take a disproportionate importance in our time where violence is everywhere," he says in the margin of his speech at the Salon of Medicine (Medec) being held this week in Paris.

In the choking game, after getting hyperventilation by several quick knee bends and deep breaths, the child makes compressing the carotid inches by a classmate or any link to interrupt the blood supply brain. After experiencing feelings of hallucinatory type, it quickly loses consciousness and then shaken with spasms and convulsions. At this critical moment, a fellow comes and makes him tell her "visions and sensations."

After testing this game more, children are sometimes tempted to renew itself: the danger is so important, because no one is there to stop the macabre race.

"Those who engage in these games are experiencing tinnitus, have colorful visions that stimulate their morbid side," says Dr. Lavaud, which in five years has dealt with three cases, two of which resulted in the died young.

In less than three to four minutes of complete anoxia, marked by a coma more profound, death occurs from respiratory arrest and cardiac arrest. There may be abnormal heart rhythm type of ventricular fibrillation or torsades de pointes, which facilitate death.

In case of survival, the brain oxygen deprivation causes symptoms similar to those of meningitis sequelae, more or less serious depending on the duration of hypoxia and brain areas involved paralysis, epilepsy, deafness, blindness, impaired behavior or severe encephalopathy, no social life, warns the doctor.

Red cheeks, lack of concentration, severe headaches, marks on the neck, the withdrawal and the obsession not leave a link (scarf, rope ...) are all signs to alert Parents and teachers, according to testimony gathered by Magali Duwelz.

Since the establishment of the association, the Ministry of National Education has mobilized to educate teachers. But it is difficult to convince of the need for a large-scale campaign, said Claude Beautiful, juvenile magistrate, councilor to the Institute of Security Studies, stating that "warn against practices may instead be encourage "