Traumatic Injuries in Off-Road Bicycling

Mountain Biking Injuries Requiring Trauma Center Admission: A 10-year Regional Trauma System Experience

“…This is concordant with the view that helmet use is widely (80 -90%) practiced in the mountain biking community. 2,5,6 The number and the severity of spine injuries observed were striking. There may have been a component of a referral bias because of the fact that one of the trauma centers serves as a tertiary care referral center for spine injuries for the province.…”

“…Most studies confirm that fractures are the most common type of injury sustained by the riders apart from soft tissue injuries 4,6,14 and that the upper extremity is the most commonly involved. In this study, as expected for a recreational sport, orthopedic injuries consisted of about half of the injuries.…”

“…The initial studies on this subject revealed that up to 85% of the mountain bikers sustain injuries. Most of these were noted to be minor injuries such as skin and soft tissue wounds 5,6 followed by orthopedic injuries such as fractures, sprains and dislocations 6 -8 most commonly involving the upper extremities.…”

“…2,7,9 -11 These injuries occur despite high compliance (80 -90%) of helmet use among the mountain bikers. 2,5,6 The literature on mountain biking injuries is growing, however, there have been no previous studies of any size that primarily addressed injuries severe enough to warrant a trauma center admission and tracked emerging injury trends.…”

Epidemiology of injuries in adventure racing athletes

“…Training and injury data in the individual sports of orienteering, 1-7 mountain biking, [8][9][10][11][12][13] and canoeing [14][15][16][17] have been described in varying quality and quantity over the past 20 years. More recently, in line with its increasing popularity, the sport of triathlon has been the focus of research studies.…”