CDC: Snowboarding tops lists for outdoor injuries
NEW YORK (AP) -June 10, 2008
Trailing snowboarding are sledding and hiking, researchers at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in the
journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine.
The most common problems were broken bones and sprains,
accounting for half of all cases. About 7 percent of ER visits were
for concussions or other brain injuries.
"We want people to participate in outdoor recreational
activities. But we want people to recognize that there's cause for
concern and people can and do get injured," study co-author Arlene
Greenspan said Tuesday.
She said injuries can be avoided through planning and
preparation: making sure your fitness level and skills match the
activity and using proper equipment like helmets.
Greenspan said the study is the first to look at injuries from
all activities, instead of individual sports or geographic areas.
The researchers looked at data on nonfatal injuries from outdoor
activities treated at 63 hospitals in 2004 and 2005. They
calculated that almost 213,000 people annually were treated for
such injuries nationwide. About half of those injured are young,
between ages 10 and 24 and half of the injuries are caused by
falls.
Males are injured at twice the rate of females, but the research
didn't look at the reasons.
"It could be that males are more risky or it could be that
males just participate more than females, or a combination of
both," said Greenspan.
Nearly 26 percent of the injures were from snowboarding followed
by sledding (11 percent); hiking (6 percent); mountain biking,
personal watercraft, water skiing or tubing (4 percent); fishing (3
percent) and swimming (2 percent).
From his experience on ski patrols, "it makes perfect sense to
me that snowboard injuries rank high," said Dr. Paul Auerbach, of
Stanford School of Medicine.
Auerbach, who writes a blog on outdoor medicine, said such
studies allow researchers to look for patterns in injuries that can
be used in prevention programs. He's one of the founders of the
Wilderness Medical Society, which publishes the journal.
"Some activities have risks and you can't take all the risks
out of the wilderness," said Auerbach. "But what you'd like to do
is take the unnecessary risk out."
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On the Net:
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/injury
Wilderness Medical Society: http://www.wms.org/