Statistical snow sports injury trends in Scotland

At the time of writing this page, the Scottish Snow Sports Safety Study has now been in operation for 6 years - long enough for us to produce trend charts with time. The idea of this form of analysis is, fairly obviously, to monitor some of the most important trends in our injury data with time. Once again, not all of the data available to me can be presented here for a variety of reasons - this page contains the trends data for years 1-4 of the study (i.e. 1999/00-2002/2003). In the next few months I will be able to update this page with the trends results up to and including 2004/05 season - I just need to find the time to do it! If you would like more information or explanation, then you could try emailing me a private message. It is important to note that, as this website is fully copyrighted, if you wish to use any of the graphics or data featured on this page, you must also please send me an email first to clear all the legalities.

The injury rate for snow sports in Scotland has demonstrated a consistent and significant fall every year since the inception of our study. In 1999/2001, the rate was 3.72 IPTSD (injuries per thousand skier days) - in 2002/03 this had fallen to 2.64. Expressed as Mean Days Between Injury, this is an increase from 268 to 379 days. In other words, in 2002/03 on average you would have to ski or snowboard for an extra 111 days in order to sustain an injury compared to 1999/2001. I would love to claim that our study has, through raised public awareness, had an beneficial influence on these statistics. Probably so to some degree, but in reality improvements in equipment design, rental shop standards and ski area management have all been additional positive factors. At the end of the day, I'm not really fussed - as long as the risk of injury stays this low or, better still, keeps dropping. Click on the thumbnails for the graphs.

Expressed as Injuries per 1000 skier days	Expressed as Mean days Between Injury (MDBI)

The majority of casualties in all snow sports tend to be male, especially amongst snowboarders and skiboarders. In alpine skiing, the percentage of casualties who were male fell below 50% for the first time in 2002/03. Interestingly, amongst all sports there has been a steady growth in the number of casualties aged less than 17 years since 2001. Ever since our research started, we have identified those under 17 yrs as being at increased risk of injury, which is consistent with research from elsewhere in the world. We plan to target the under 17's and parents hopefully with some funded health education in winter 2003/04. At the other end of the spectrum, few snowboarders or skiboarders are aged over 40 yrs, in contrast to alpine skiers. The mean age of a casualty is 25.4 yrs (alpine ski), 22.7 yrs (snowboard) and 19.1 (skiboard).

% of injured population aged < 17 yrs	% of injured population aged > 40 yrs	Mean age of casualties

Rates of protective equipment use have always been woefully low in Scotland as the following charts clearly demonstrate. On average over the last 4 years, only 7.0% of all those on the slopes in Scotland wear a helmet. Interestingly, and for reasons that aren't immediately obvious to me (like a massive price drop in the shops) in 2002/03 the figure rose to 17.5%! It will be interesting to see if this blip continues next year. Prior to this last season, you can see that those wearing a helmet were marginally over-represented amongst the injured group compared to controls. Others have reported this before....suggesting that those who wear helmets perhaps push their luck and are consequently more likely to be injured. About 10% of all snowboarders wear wrist guards, but only about 4% of the injured population! How many more broken wrists will it take until this starts to change?!

Rates of helmet use in Scotland amongst injured people	Use of wrist guards by snowboarders - injured and uninjured

I'm restricted in what I can show you here, but another of the issues that we picked up on early in our work was the increased risk of injury to those on their very first day of participation in snow sports. On average, first day participants (FDPs) are more than twice as likely to be injured as everyone else. There has been a decline over the four years of the study in the % of FDPs being injured, but as the graph below shows, last year saw a blip with an increase. Could have been related to the very poor snow conditions we saw in 2002/03....time will tell. We have a paper coming out towards the end of 2003 in the American Journal of Sports Medicine which focuses specifically on the factors that place FDPs at increased risk of injury.

FDPs as a % of the injured population in Scotland

The following graphs show the variation in the rate of fractures (broken bones) and soft tissue sprains seen in all the three major snow sports in Scotland over the last four years. You'll see straight away that skiboarding and snowboarding have higher rates of fractures than alpine skiing. In 2000/01, over 40% of all skiboard injuries were fractures - a real worry! Since then , as the graph shows, the risk of a fracture from skiboarding has declined somewhat, but still remains the highest of all the snow sports. Snowboarding fracture rates showed a gradual upward trend until last season, when the rate dropped for the first time. Last season also saw a sharp rise in the fracture rate amongst alpine skiers - up to 26.3%, 0.1% higher than snowboarding. This may prove to be a statistical blip caused by the adverse snow conditions last year....but why should this affect skiers and not snowboarders? Perhaps the latter are better able to cope with variable snow conditions than are skiers. The sprain graph shows how closely alpine skiing and skiboarding are correlated as the two lines follow each other very closely. Snowboarders have consistently sustained lower rates of sprains than the other two sports.

Fracture rates amongst the snow sports	Sprain rates amongst the snow sports

For me, the most important thing by far is that the overall risk of an injury in Scotland has decreased significantly - from 3.72 IPTSD to 2.64. I hope this either continues to fall or at the very least plateaus out at this level. There is still much work that could be done to target specific groups in order to reduce the risk further - particularly those aged less than 17 and those on their first day's experience. Rates of helmet and wrist guard use continue to lag way behind those of other countries and more needs to be done to overcome the negative perceptions people have of protective gear in general. Other countries have managed it so why not Scotland? Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Here's hoping for a return to 2000/01 Scottish snow conditions this coming winter!!

Overall injury rates	Basic Casualty Demographics	Use of protective equipment
Ability level	Injury type	Conclusions