Iconic Films
2 for 1 tickets to Singin' In The Rain, this coming Monday. Book now
Navigation - link to other main sections from here
Ski breaks: the X-ray stories
Knees and wrists are most likely to be damaged reveals a fascinating series of X-rays of common ski and board injuries
If you are a skier, then the knee is the most likely injury on the slopes. And if you're a boarder? Do take care of your wrists, the most vulnerable to damage.
And who is most likely to get hurt on a ski holiday? No, not the intermediates out of their depth on a black run, nor the off-piste boarder - but the starter skier.
In a fascinating array of statistics, it is also revealed that snowboarders trying the sport for the first time are almost three times as likely to injure themselves as anyone else out on the mountain.
But of all categories of ability, it is not surprising that most accidents happen late in the day, when the pistes are wearing thin and boarders and skiers are tired. Then they stand a chance of really being knackered.
The statistics were revealed to Times Online by Dr Mike Langran, a partner in a medical practice in the Scottish ski resort of Aviemore and founder of the website www.ski-injury.com.
His research shows that the body parts most likely to be injured are, for skiers, the knee (32% of all ski injuries), head/face (13.7%), shoulder (9.1%), lower leg (7.6%), wrist (5.4%) and thumb (4.9%) (that is why you hear a lot of talk about the ACL - the anterior cruciate ligament - the injury feared by skiers and footballers the world over).
For snowboarders, the body parts most likely to be hurt are the wrist (24.9% of all boarding injuries), head/face (14.3%). shoulder (13.1%), knee (11.8%) and ankle (5.9%).
Dr Langran says that the although this makes wrist injuries sound very common, you would actually have to snowboard for an average of 1,245 days before you get hurt.
Obviously, in the big resorts, where thousands of people are skiing and snowboarding on a single day, there’s a good chance that someone will get hurt. After all, it’s a common sight to see a pair of crossed skis on the slope, warning that someone has taken a bad tumble.
But getting injured while out in the mountains is less likely than you probably think. Someone being pushed through an airport in a wheelchair with a plaster cast on their leg is certain to attract attention but the figures show that skiing and snowboarding are fairly safe.
According to statistics from the International Society for Skiing Safety, skiers tend to get one or two injuries for every 1,000 days skiing while snowboarders are around twice as likely to get hurt.
This means that for the average British skier or snowboarder, who tends to go to the mountains once each winter for a seven-day holiday, is unlikely ever to get injured in their entire lifetime.
I had a bad cut on my head whilst skiing in La Grave, France. When we came to the doctor's it was just several minutes after his working hours finished and he didn't want to see me. I had to give him 150 Euro to treat me. He did not wont to receive my issurance coverage.
Bad doctors in France!
Ivana, Zagreb, Croatia
I was coming off a chair lift in Val D'Isere whilst snowboarding and was taken out by a skier and as a consequence stretchered off the mountain. The French doctor told me and the American guide that I had a sprained ankle - a fact that neither of us believed looking at it. When I got back to the UK I saw a surgeon who operated the next day on a broken foot, ankle and leg. His comment was that without the surgery I would be a wheelchair invalid in 2-3 years and the 3 months in plaster was a small price to pay for his skill but not the French Doctors incompetence.
Keith Tracy, Birmingham, West Mids
I am a snowboarder and i have a bruised coccyx and glutealis more often than not.
Patrick, Hague, Netherlands
Good article.
Also have a loo at Gallery Ski trauma on WorldOrtho- it is a summary of the 10,000 ski injuries I personally treated.
Gene, Sydney,