Injury Risk Evaluation in Sport Climbing

Abstract

The aim of this study was to quantify and rate acute sport climbing injuries. Acute sport climbing injuries occurring from 2002 to 2006 were retrospectively assessed with a standardized web based questionnaire. A total number of 1962 climbers reported 699 injuries, which is equivalent to 0.2 injuries per 1 000 h of sport participation. Most (74.4%) of the injuries were of minor severity rated NACA I or NACA II. Injury distribution between the upper (42.6%) and lower extremities (41.3%) was similar, with ligament injuries, contusions and fractures being the most common injury types. Years of climbing experience (p<0.01), difficulty level (p<0.01), climbing time per week during summer (p<0.01) and winter (p<0.01) months were correlated with the injury rate. Age (p<0.05 (p=0.034)), years of climbing experience (p<0.01) and average climbing level (p<0.01) were correlated to the injury severity rated through NACA scores. The risk of acute injuries per 1 000 h of sport participation in sport climbing was lower than in previous studies on general rock climbing and higher than in studies on indoor climbing. In order to perform inter-study comparisons of future studies on climbing injuries, the use of a systematic and standardized scoring system (UIAA score) is essential.

A Critical Review of the Incidence and Risk Factors for Finger Injuries in Rock Climbing

“…Woollings, McKay and Emery (36) found 4 studies that estimated incidence rate in injuries/1000h climbing (1,17,21,27). We found an additional 6 studies that had data that had been used to estimate incidence rate.…”

“…Studies that have estimated the reported prevalence of injuries associated with rock climbing vary between 10% and 81% irrespective of cause; between 10% and 50% for impact injuries (9,11,17,37); between 28% and 81% for non-impact acute trauma injuries (9,11,18); and between 33% to 44% for chronic overuse injuries (1,9,37,38). Variance is likely to be 6 associated with differences in the nature, operational level of performance, frequency of performance and duration of activity between climbing disciplines.…”

Feet injuries in rock climbers

“…Killian et al [75] found a significant correlation between the incidence of ankle sprains and bouldering as well as in between ankle sprains and sport climbing. Neuhof et al [2] in contrast found a even injury distribution between the upper (42.6%) and lower extremities (41.3%) (Figure 1). In summary, most of the studies found that overuse injuries are mainly affecting the upper extremity, while acute traumatic injuries are more frequently located on the lower extremity [1,76] .…”

“…So far, most research indicates that the upper extremity to be the most injured body region in non-alpine rock-climbing [2,3,5,6,10,14,15,40,60,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] . Schöffl et al [61] analysed 604 injured climbers (sport climbing, indoor climbing) and reported 247 of 604 (40.9%) injuries involved the hand, 9.1% the foot.…”

“…While alpine climbing has its inherent dangers, sport, indoor and competition climbing showed a minor injury risk [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] . Also, most of the injuries occurring are of minor severity and often due to overuse [1,3,16] .…”