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Winter sports are often regarded a being dangerous sports plauged with injuries.
However the injury risk is lower than people would believe. Overall the injury risk is about 0.4% (i.e. for every 1000 people skiing or snowboarding in a day, between 2 and 4 will require medical attention, for snowboarding it is higher 3 to 5.).
ACL injuries (Anterior Cruciate Ligament), carries a ratio of 1 in 2000.
Alpine skiing injuries have been decreasing steadily for the last 5 years, snowboarding rates have gone up and down.
Telemark ski injury rates have remained static - although the overall risk of injury is very low.
Fatalities
Fatalities are extremely low for the vast majority of skiers who either stick to the pistes or within their own limits, using the right equipment when going offpiste.
- There is 1 death per 1.5 million ski days.
- The majority of there are either caused by a pre-existing medical condition or a traumatic accident.
- Traumatic accidents that result in a fatality usually occur due to an avalanche or an impact with another object such as a tree, skier, snowboarder or pylon.
- The head being the area of the body most associated with a fatality from a traumatic accident.
- Wearing a helmet is highly recommended - but remember, wearing a helmet does not make you invincible!
Alpine Skiing
One third of all ski injuries affect the knee joint.
The medial collateral ligament, ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament), the meniscus (cartilage) or any combination of the three.
Other areas are the wrist, the shoulder joint, the spine and the head.
Anterior Cruciate Ligament
The three main incidents responsible for injury to the Anterior Cruciate Ligament while skiing are:
- Boot Induced - after landing off balance from a jump, the boot pushes on the calf leading to injury.
- Phantom Foot - the tail of the ski acts as a lever when a skier falls off balance to the rear.
- HFB (hit from behind) - an impact on the rear of the calf (another ski or snowboard) does the same.
Tips to avoid Anterior Cruciate Ligament injuries
- When falling keep your knees flexed, do not keep them straight.
- When you fall stay down until you have stopped sliding.
- Avoid jumping unless you know where you are landing and how to land.
Snowboarding
Snowboarding is constantly becoming more and more popular and now accounts for between 25-40% of the slop users.
Injuries sustained from snowboarding differ from skiing and is mainly sustained to the upper body.
Alot of these are wrist injuries with an ever increasing number of serious spine injuries becoming more common.
Snowboarders incur different injuries to skiers, both in terms of the areas that get injured and the type of injuries themselves.
Compared to skiers, snowboarders are far more likely to sustain injuries to the upper limb and less likely to the lower limb.
The amount of fractures is twice as high amongst snowboarders to skiers -25% to 12.5%.
The reason for this is explained by the design of the equipment and the way it is used.
When a snowboarder falls their instinctive reaction is to outstretch their hand in order to break their fall.
This results in wrist fractures being the most common form of snowboarding injury.
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