Women Vertebra Fracture Risk Higher Skiing Vs. Snowboarding

Women had a larger percentage of acute vertebral fractures from skiing than from snowboarding according to a recent study of 466 acute fractures.

In the study, “Acute Vertebral Fractures in Skiing and Snowboarding: A 20-Year Sex-Specific Analysis of National Injury Data,” was published online on July 7, 2022 in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine.

“The epidemiology of acute vertebral fractures sustained while skiing and snowboarding remains poorly defined in the United States,” the researchers wrote.

They hypothesized there would be no significant differences across sex and a greater number of acute vertebral fractures in younger age groups associated with skiing and snowboarding.

For the analysis, they identified patients who ended up in an emergency department in the United State between 2000 and 2019 for a skiing or snowboarding-related injury using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System.

They identified 466 acute vertebral fractures that occurred during skiing and snowboarding and men accounted for the majority of them (67.8%; 95% CI, 62.6%-73.0%) during skiing and 82.1% (95% CI, 76.3%-87.8%) during snowboarding.

The researchers noted that that this represented a significantly larger percentage of acute vertebral fracture while snowboarding compared with skiing (p = .002).

Women accounted for 32.2% (95% CI, 27.0%-37.4%) of acute vertebral fractures while skiing and 17.9% (95% CI, 12.2%-23.7%) while snowboarding. They had a larger percentage of these types of injuries while skiing compared with snowboarding (p = .002).

When it came to the anatomical location of injury, snowboarders were more likely than skiers to sustain an acute vertebral fracture in the region of the coccyx (21.5% [95% CI, 14.3%-28.7%] vs. 11.5% [95% CI, 3.5%-16.9%], respectively; p = .003).

In addition, there was a significant decrease in the number of snowboarding-related acute vertebral fractures over a 20-year period, 899 in 2000-2003 vs. 283 in 2016-2019 (p < .01) The change in skiing-related acute vertebral fractures over the study period was not statistically significant.

“This national study of acute vertebral fractures sustained while skiing and snowboarding identified critical sex- and age-specific differences in the population at risk, anatomic location of injury, and mechanism of injury. The national data generated from this study over a 20-year period may be utilized to better inform public health injury awareness and prevention initiatives in the rapidly growing sports of skiing and snowboarding,” they wrote.

Study authors included William H. Huffman, B.S., Lori Jia, B.S., both from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Kevin Pirruccio, M.D., of Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut; Xinning Li, M.D., of Boston University Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts; and Andrew C. Hecht, M.D., and Robert L. Parisien, M.D., both from Mount Sinai, New York, New York.