Epidemiological Study of Foot Injuries in the Practice of Sport Climbing

Abstract

Background. Climbing is a multidisciplinary sport, where the main objective is to reach the highest point of a rock wall or to reach the end of an established route. There are different types of modalities: sport climbing and traditional climbing. The risks and precautions taken with respect to this sport will directly affect the epidemiology of injuries related to its practice. The present study was designed to identify and characterize the most frequent injuries in the feet of climbers and to determine if there is a relationship between the injuries that appear and the time spent practicing the sport. Methods. A total of 53 people were collected, 32 men and 21 women, corresponding to the climbers of the FEXME (Extremadura Federation of Mountain and Climbing). To determine the diagnoses, exploratory tests, classified according to the variables to be studied, are carried out: inspection variables and questionnaire variables. Results. The average number of years of climbing was seven years, and the average number of hours of training per week was 6.6 h. Some type of alterations were presented in 70% of the respondents, and foot pain was present during climbing in 45% of the participants. The p-value showed a relationship between years of climbing and the occurrence of chronic foot injuries (p = 0.035), however, there is no relationship between the occurrence of injuries and chronological age. Conclusion. We can see that the most frequent injuries in the practice of climbing are claw toes, dermal alterations such as bursitis of the first toe and hallux limitus, followed by hallux valgus. Similarly, only a significant relationship was found between the number of years of climbing and the appearance of foot injuries.

Analyzing Injury Patterns in Climbing: A Comprehensive Study of Risk Factors

“…The likelihood of injury in other climbing disciplines significantly increases with the amount of time dedicated to these disciplines of climbing, but this trend is not observed beyond 200 h per year. The increasing number of injuries with the amount of time is also reported in other research [ 26 ]. Among very experienced climbers, who climbed more than 200 h a year, the number of injuries did not continue to increase.…”

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