Skydiving Injuries

Abstract

Sport skydiving is continually growing in popularity worldwide, with many styles and disciplines practiced. This chapter summarizes the current literature and statistics, in order to detail the mortality and incidence of injuries encountered in this extreme sport. Modern equipment, along with equipment innovation and regulation of the sport through national and international associations, has contributed to decreasing the overall skydiving morbidity and mortality: as a result, compared to other “extreme” sports, today skydiving probably has a low injury and mortality rate. However, the introduction of modern parachutes has also resulted in different; therefore, the prevention of skydiving injuries today should mainly focus on training and wing parachute piloting, for both novices and more experienced skydivers.