Snow sports accounted for more than 64 percent of emergency-room visits for treatment of injuries suffered during outdoors activities, according to the first national study to estimate recreational injuries.
Snowboarding was responsible for 25.5 percent of the injuries, followed closely by snow skiing at 24.2 percent. Sledding -- including sleds, toboggans, snow disks and tubes -- was next at 10.8 percent. And snowmobiling, in sixth place, accounted for 3.8 percent.
The information, gathered by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was reported in the latest issue of 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.
She said injuries can be avoided through planning and preparation: making sure your fitness level and skills match the activity and using proper equipment, such as helmets.
Greenspan said the study is the first to look at injuries from all outdoors 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 those injured were young, between ages 10 and 24, and half the injuries were caused by falls.
Males were 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," Greenspan said.
The top 10 activities for percentage of injuries were: snowboarding (25.5), snow skiing (24.2), sledding (10.8), surfing (8.4), hiking (6.3), snowmobiling (3.8), personal watercraft (3.7), mountain biking (3.6), water skiing or tubing (3.6) and fishing (3.3).
From his experience on ski patrols, "it makes perfect sense to me that snowboard injuries rank high," said Dr. Paul Auerbach, of the 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," Auerbach said. "But what you'd like to do is take the unnecessary risk out."
On the Web:
CDC -- cdc.gov/injury
Wilderness Medical Society -- wms.org
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