The popularity of extreme sports has soared in recent years. Participants in the X Games and other sporting events regularly perform heart-stopping tricks on skis and snowboards, skateboards and mountain bikes, all of them endlessly replayed on YouTube and television for a growing audience of thrill-seekers.
A wide variety of sports fall into the category of adventure and extreme sports. Sports are performed in contact with the “ground”; mountain running and biking, rock climbing, ice climbing and mountaineering. In the air: skydiving and base jumping. On water: surfing, white water kayaking and rafting, board sailing and diving. Some sports may be performed as a combination of few disciplines, such as water and air, e.g. kite surfing, and as so involve very unique mechanisms of injury.
SOS orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Naven Duggal will be presenting on foot and ankle injuries in extreme sports athletes at the upcoming International Extreme Sports Medicine Congress in Boulder, Colorado.
Dr. Duggal’s research interests in fractures and injury patterns include his past national presentations on the biomechanical compression forces in the ankle joint, the use of Youtube to determine injury mechanism for Achilles tendon ruptures and the evaluation of lower extremity injury patterns in snowboarders.
Future research is progressing alongside the sport development, to allow sport mechanisms, injury patterns and predisposing factors to be better understood. It is the hope to make the sports safer without detracting from their adventure.
References:
Adventure and Extreme Sports Injuries - Epidemiology, Treatment, Rehabilitation and Prevention – Authors Omer Mei-Dan, Mike Carmont
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/with-the-thrills-come-extreme-risks - Author Jane E Brody