Skiing accidents in the past 15 years

Abstract

For the last 15 years a statistical analysis of distances skied and of alpine skiing accidents has been performed in the Davos‐Klosters skiing area, a ‘closed’ skiing area, where every skier has to return from the top to the bottom station. Distance skied is measured by vertical drop in 10⁶ km determined by calculations from frequency surveys by lift‐operators. About 2.5 million km per season have been skied during the past years, a number remaining constant for the last 15 years. In the same time the requirement for rescue‐transports in this area has shown a decline of 46% to 288 transports per season due to a decrease of the number of injuries with initial immobilization. Therefore the so‐called transport‐quotient (one rescue‐transport per 10⁴ km of vertical drop skied) has decreased from its initial value of 4 to 1 per 10⁴ km. During the same time all winter sport injuries were analysed at the hospital of Davos. About 90% are injuries caused by alpine skiing resulting in a total of 17 246 alpine skiing injuries for the last 15 years. There is a great decline in the incidence of lower leg fractures with a contrary development of knee injuries. Today half of the lower leg injuries are knee injuries (280 knee injuries out of a total of 1250 alpine skiing accidents per season). There is a gradual increase of upper extremity injuries from 17% of all skiing injuries in 1972 to 35% in 1976. A Swiss multicentre study on skiing safety shows comparable injury patterns in other skiing areas. The average injury‐severity measured by several parameters is declining. In a technical investigation of skiing equipment of 1072 persons who sustained an accident, only 32% had ski bindings with tolerable frontal release and 17% with tolerable torsional release. Parallel measurements of bindings of 600 non‐injured skiers gave the same alarming results. More research on the correlation between binding adjustment and knee injuries is needed.