Injuries related to adventure sports (all ages)

Adventure sports include jet skiing, kayaking, scuba diving, surfing, boogie boarding, water skiing, wind surfing, snow boarding, abseiling, rappelling, hiking, mountaineering, orienteering, rogaining, river rafting, white water rafting, rock climbing, bungy jumping, hang gliding, parachuting, sky diving, paragliding and parasailing.

Frequency: There was a total of 1,055 emergency department (ED) presentations (excluding admissions) and 1,887 hospital admissions related to adventure sports injuries among persons of all ages, recorded in the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD) and the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED) over the 5-year period 2003-2007.

Table 1 shows the annual frequency of ED presentations and hospital admissions by year. The frequency of adventure sports injuries varied over the years with highest proportion of ED cases reported in 2005 and admissions in 2007 (Table 1).

Table 1: Adventure sports-related injury ED presentations and hospital admissions by year

Age: The highest injury frequency occurred in participants aged 15-29 years, accounting for 49% of all hospital admissions and 53% of ED presentations.

Figure 1: Adventure sports-related injury presentations by age groups and level of severity

Gender: Males were over represented, accounting for 77% of hospitalisations and 80% of ED presentations.

Cause: Falls were the most common reported cause for hospital admissions (46%) and ED presentations (37%), followed by hit/struck/crush (hospital admissions, 16%; ED presentations, 30%).

Nature of injury: Among hospital admissions, fracture was the most common injury type (44%), followed by dislocations, sprains and strains (11%), and open wounds (8%). This pattern was similar among ED presentations but in reverse order of magnitude. Open wounds accounted for most of the ED presentations (25%), closely followed by sprains and strains (23%), and fractures (17%).

Body region: For admissions, the upper extremity was the most frequent injured body region (27%), closely followed by the lower extremity (26%) and the head, face and neck (22%). In contrast, the lower extremity accounted for most of the ED presentations (32%), followed by the upper extremity (30%) and the head, face and neck (23%).

Activity: Among hospital admissions, snowboarding was the most common activity undertaken when injured (26%), followed by surfing (22%) and water skiing (18%). Among ED presentations, surfing injuries accounted for half of all cases, followed by water skiing (20%) and snowboarding (10%).

Location: In 67% of admissions cases, the location of injury was coded to other specified locations. Among ED presentations, most of the injuries occurred at a place of recreations (62%).

Discharge status: Among the 1,887 admissions, 66% stayed in hospital for less than 2 days. Twenty-seven percent of admissions were hospitalised for 2-7 days and 6% stayed in hospital for more than 8 days. At the end of their stay, 90% were discharged home and 9% were transferred to an acute hospital for extended care. In 5 cases, the patient died in hospital. All but one death was marine aquatic sports.

Further information: For further information regarding adventure sports-related injury, see Hazard editions 51 and 56.

Department of Planning and Community Development - Sports & Recreation Victoria: www.sport.vic.gov.au

Smartplay Victoria: www.smartplay.com.au

Data source: The Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED): January 2003 to December 2007. The Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD): January 2003 to December 2007.

Search Strategy: Cases in the VAED data were selected using code “U53.1 Jet Skiing”, “U53.2 Kayaking”, “U54.2 Scuba Diving”, “U54.4 Surfing and Boogie Boarding”, “U54.6 Water Skiing”, “U54.7 Wind Surfing”, “U55.4 Snow boarding”, “U64.0 Abseiling and rappelling”, “U64.1 Hiking”, “U64.2 Mountaineering”, “U64.3 Orienteering and rogaining”, “U64.4 River rafting”, “U64.5 White-water rafting”, “U64.6 Rock climbing”, “U64.7 Bungy jumping”, “U64.8 Other specified adventure sport”, “U64.9 Unspecified adventure sport”, “U68.3 Hang gliding”, “U68.4 Parachuting and Sky diving”, and “U68.5 Paragliding and Parasailing”. Cases in the VEMD were selected by searching those cases with the same text terms as the VAED codes.