Head Injuries in Skiers and Snowboarders

Abstract

In recent years, snowboarding has gained great popularity, carving skiing has become the main stream instead of conventional skiing, and enthusiasts of the extremely short fan ski are increasing rapidly. Snowboarding induced head injuries are approximately five or six times more likely to occur than head injuries caused by skiing accidents in ski slope. This can be attributed to the characteristic structure of the snowboard that makes it relatively easy for snowboarders to sustain injury to the occipital region by jumps or falls on gentle slopes. With regard to more serious cases, skiing injuries are usually characterized by cranio-facial fracture or cerebral contusion caused by collisions, and snowboarding injuries tend to center around acute subdural hematoma cases often caused by falls on the slope. Acute subdural hematoma in these circumstances tends not to be accompanied by cerebral contusion, and as such, it is termed "pure subdural hematoma". Here, shear strain is the assumed mechanism of bridging vein injury. Based on both our own case studies and literature sources, we report the present circumstances of snowboarding and skiing related head injuries and methods of injury prevention.