Adventure sports injuries

Abstract

Worldwide adventure tourism and adventure sports are important leisure activities of growing popularity. In this context, commercial adventure tourism has become increasingly important to the world economy. Adventure sports encompass a number of outdoor activities including rock climbing, mountaineering, skydiving, white water rafting, mountain biking, and BASE jumping. Some of these sports are performed by novice athletes, whereas others are only practiced by experienced athletes. Recent reports have highlighted significant risk of injury and death associated with mountaineering 30, 33, 40, skydiving 6, white water rafting, and mountain biking 8. This chapter reviews the published literature on these new sports from an injury perspective. There is a brief description of the origins of the sport, the equipment used together with injury and fatality rates and specific types of injury related to each sport.