Crescent-News.com - Most serious of outdoor injuries occur in the winter

As we head off into a summer filled with prospects of ice packs, bandages and liniment, it's encouraging to know that the majority of the most dangerous of outdoor pursuits are reserved for winter.

A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this week in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine toted up the activities behind more than 210,000 outdoor recreational injuries treated in emergency departments each year during 2004 and 2005.

Researchers found snowboarding accounted for just over a quarter of all the outdoor recreation injuries serious enough to get treated at a hospital, followed by sledding (10.8 percent), hiking (6.3 percent), personal watercraft (3.7 percent) and water skiing or tubing and mountain biking (each 3.6 percent). Fishing was responsible for 3.3 percent of the ER visits and swimming, 2.1 percent.

More than half (51.5 percent) of those injured were between the ages of 10 and 24, and 69 percent of the wounded were male.

Data for the study came from a national network of 63 hospital emergency departments that report all the cases they see through an electronic form.

Some common injuries, such as those due to snow skiing (22 percent of all cases) and surfing (8 percent) could not be estimated on a national basis, however, because the cases were clustered in only a few hospitals and limited geographic areas.

Fractures and sprains to arms and legs made up about 52 percent of the outdoor injuries, followed by cuts and scrapes for about 30 percent of the injuries. Traumatic brain injuries (ranging from concussion to a more serious internal injury to the head), accounted for 6.5 percent of the injuries.

Arlene Greenspan, co-author of the study, said it is the first research that attempts to look at injuries from all types of outdoor recreation rather than specific activities. Competitive sports (soccer, softball, golf, etc.) were not tracked in the study.

"We want people to participate in outdoor recreational activities," Greenspan said. "But we want them to recognize that people can and do get injured doing these things. They need to know their skill levels, not exceed their limits and use the right equipment, particularly helmets appropriate for activities like snowboarding, snowmobiling, skiing and rock climbing."

Yet another warm-weather hazard, particularly for youngsters, are golf carts. Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, report that injuries from golf cart mishaps have risen 130 percent between 1990 and 2006, when nearly 14,000 injuries were reported. The report appears in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Laura McKenzie, an investigator with the hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy, said golf carts are routinely used for transportation in many non-golf settings, from airports and sporting events to hospitals and college campuses. In some resorts and retirement communities, carts and bikes are the only vehicles allowed. Yet they can go as fast as 25 miles an hour and often have no restraints or other safety features.

The study found that falling or jumping from a cart caused about 39 percent of the injuries overall, and that such events were much more likely to result in serious injury to the head or neck among children than for adults.

Okay, so watch out for the kids around golf carts. But at least they're safe in their camp or dorm beds, right?

Well, not necessarily if they're in a bunk bed, according to another study by Nationwide McKenzie and Dr. Gary Smith, in the June issue of Pediatrics.

They found there's an average of 36,000 bunk bed injuries a year among people 21 and younger. Three quarters of the injuries were in children younger than 10, and most of those injuries resulted from falls.

In fact, the youngest children, 3 and under, were 40 percent more likely to sustain head injuries in a bunk fall than older kids. That's because small children tend to have a higher center of gravity and thus are more likely to fall headfirst.

But there was also a surprising spike in bunk bed injury rates among young adults between 18 and 21, perhaps because more people in that age bracket wind up in such beds at college, camps and in the military compared to younger teens.

While some of the older bunkies got hurt from a fall, more often than not they got hurt when a bunk bed broke or when they sat up and hit their head.