A recent study of skiing and snowboarding injuries over 18 seasons at a Vermont resort found that injury rates were higher in snowboarders than skiers. The research, reported online in the American Journal of Sports Medicine and coauthored by Robert Johnson, M.D., University of Vermont professor emeritus of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, sought to examine not only the injury patterns and type of injuries sustained while snowboarding, but differences in injuries between snowboarders and downhill skiers in regards to age, experience and sex as well.

According to Snowsports Industries America, in 2010, about 8.2 million people went snowboarding and 11.5 million went skiing in the United States.

For close to 40 years, Johnson and colleagues Carl Ettlinger, M.S., adjunct assistant professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, and Jasper Shealy, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, have been collecting and studying ski injury data at the ski injury clinic at Vermont’s Sugarbush resort. For their most recent study, the group reviewed reports from about 12,000 injuries from 1988 to 2006.

While Johnson says injury rates fluctuated during the study timeframe, they were higher in snowboarders than skiers and highest among young, less experienced women snowboarders. Snowboarders most commonly sustained wrist injuries, while anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) sprains were most common for skiers. In addition to wrist injuries, snowboarders also sustained shoulder and ankle injuries. The most common ski injuries were knee-related.

In their conclusion, Johnson and his coauthors, including first author Suezie Kim, M.D., a UVM Class of 2007 medical alumna and fifth year orthopaedic surgery resident at New York University Langone Medical Center, and Nathan Endres, M.D., UVM assistant professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, noted that “injured snowboarders were significantly younger, less experienced, and more likely to be female than injured skiers or snowboard control participants.”

Johnson adds that there was no link between the use of terrain parks and the higher rate of injuries. However, he and the study’s authors found that less-common snowboarding injuries, “specifically collar bone fractures and ACL injuries, occur often in terrain parks.”

“It may be that having a terrain feature in one area – not a jump created by a kid in the woods –  could be a safer place to ‘get air,’” says Johnson, who would like to see bigger numbers to support his hunch in future studies. He and his colleagues agree that further investigation is necessary to determine the incidence and pattern of injuries in the terrain park.

In a Reuters article about the study findings, Johnson comments that “wearing helmets and some kinds of wrist guards is helpful in avoiding injury, but making safe decisions is most important.”