Posts Tagged ‘injuries’

BBC wildlife presenter Steve Backshall, who lives in Wooburn Green, has broken his back in a horrific rock climbing accident.

The former Really Wild Show frontman plummeted 25ft onto rocks after attempting to scale a difficult cliff face in the rain.

Steve, 35, shattered his lower leg and spine in two places. The force of the impact sent his heel bone straight through the bottom of his foot, while the jolt dislocated his ankle and fractured two vertebrae.

Fortunately there was no spinal chord damage, which could have left him permanently paralysed from the neck down.

Eyewitnesses say he was ‘’screaming in agony” after the accident at the Wye Valley in the Forest of Dean, Gloucester, last Saturday.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Steve, an experienced rock climber, said his safety equipment failed to work correctly because the cliff he was attempting to climb was too wet.

He said: “When I landed, all I can remember is hitting the ground with a sickening thud, and being in a huge amount of pain.

“I can’t begin to describe how painful it was – it’s worse than anything I’d ever experienced before.

“But I’m lucky it wasn’t a whole lot worse – I could have been paralysed or worse.”

After his fall, Steve’s climbing partner helped him walk – with the aid of a stick – for 45 minutes back to the car, and drove him to Bristol Royal Infirmary.

Steve, who hopes to leave hospital sometime this week, said his recovery could take at least six weeks.

He explained the injuries will delay three adventure TV programmes he is currently filming. But his new series, the ‘Lost Land of the Jaguar’, is scheduled to be screened on BBC One on Wednesday, July 30.

Thanks to Neil Phillips of the Bucks Free Press for the above article – we wish Steve a speedy and complete recovery.

Steve Backshall

Whilst we reported the other day that mountain biking’s claim to be an extreme sport was in jeopardy – thanks largely to the good safety record, we cannot say the same for snowboarding as research from the US’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) has demonstrated. Thanks to Mark Watson of the Black Hills Pioneer for this information.

The CDCP released a report stating that snowboarding leads the list for outdoor related injuries – area hospitals agree. Snowboarders account for approximately 25 percent of emergency room visits nationwide, according to the report, and about 20 percent year-round at the Lead-Deadwood Regional Hospital.
That number jumps up to about 75 percent of all local ER visits in the winter, said Dr. Thom Groeger, medical director for emergency at the Lead-Deadwood Regional Hospital.

“We see a lot of wrist and shoulder injuries. A lot of fractured wrists,” Groeger said. “We also see dislocated shoulders, broken collar bones and some head injuries.”
When a skier or snowboarder is injured seriously on the area slopes the local ski patrol is called in right away.

“We act as first responders. We are the first care they receive,” said T.J Evans, Terry Peak’s ski patrol director. “From there, we get them off the hill. Generally the weather is kind of an issue and the quicker we can get them out of the weather and into a patrol room the better.

“From there we go into a deeper assessment into what the problem may be and to see if there are other problems. We make an assessment on whether they are going back out to ski, heading to the lodge, to the hospital with parents or if they need an ambulance to get to the hospital.”

The vast majority of injuries consist of broken bones and strains while the Deadwood hospital receives one or two critical cases a year, he said. “We see, in the winter, the majority of critical cases coming from snowmobile accidents,” he said.
Skiers do not account for as many injuries.

Other emergency room visits come from ATV accidents, mountain bike and road bike crashes, rock climbing falls, but they are vastly outnumbered by snowboarding accidents.

“ In the past couple years I’ve seen people with fractured backs and paralysis. That’s the worst I’ve seen, Gilbert said.

Groeger said that the majority of injured snowboarders are male, between 10 and 25 years old and are injured while jumping, but added that it does depend on the level of experience.
Doctors encouraged all downhillers to wear protective gear.

I think the YouTube clip below from zayl1315 clearly demonstrates why there are so many accidents – too many nutcakes!! Personally though I have great respect for those amongst us who push themselves to the limit.

Research has shown that more people are hurt snowboarding than any other outdoor activity, accounting for a quarter of emergency room visits, according to the first national study to estimate recreational injuries in the United States.

Trailing snowboarding are sledding and hiking, researchers at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention report in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine.
The most common problems were broken bones and sprains, accounting for half of all cases. About 7 percent of ER visits were for concussions or other brain injuries.

“We want people to participate in outdoor recreational activities. But we want people to recognize that there’s cause for concern and people can and do get injured,” study co-author Arlene Greenspan said Tuesday.
She said injuries can be avoided through planning: Make sure your fitness level and skills match the activity and use proper equipment such as helmets. Greenspan said the study is the first to look at injuries from all activities, instead of individual sports or geographic areas.

The researchers looked at data on non-fatal injuries from outdoor activities treated at 63 hospitals in 2004 and 2005. They calculated that almost 213,000 people annually were treated for such injuries nationwide. About half of those injured are young, between ages 10 and 24 and half of the injuries are caused by falls.

Males are injured at twice the rate of females, but the research didn’t look at the reasons.
“It could be that males are more risky or it could be that males just participate more than females, or a combination of both,” said Greenspan.

We try to emphasise safety in all our blogging – here is another reason that reinforces are argument that you must use the right equipment, take proper instruction, do not attempt feats of heroism for which you are not qualified and do not go out in bad weather conditions……..please!