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rincon
Trad climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 4, 2009 - 01:22am PT
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[url="http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/08/02/rock-climbing-injury-rate-soaring.html]health.usnews.com]health.usnews.com[/url]
Nothing shocking, more climbers...more accidents, and the higher you deck from, the worse you get hurt.
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rincon
Trad climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2009 - 01:27am PT
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Ya think?
I have no idea, what happened :-)
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Greg Barnes
climber
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One word: bouldering.
High injury rate, low severe injury and fatality rate.
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rincon
Trad climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2009 - 01:30am PT
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"Falls caused about 70 percent of the injuries, with the distance the person fell correlating to the injury's severity. Patients who fell from heights of greater than 20 feet had 10 times the likelihood on needing to be hospitalized, compared with those who fell from lesser heights."
One good thing, according to the study, us old guys are less likely to fall!
"The average age of an injured climber was 26, with about 56 percent of those hurt being between the ages of 20 and 39. Younger climbers accounted for 30 percent of those injured, while the rest were aged 40 or older."
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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I could have written the link with no information given to me. Yes if you fall from 40 feet it will generally hurt more than 20 feet. And yes if you fall it may hurt. So rate is not soaring as more people climb....the sport is growing...more will get hurt if not paying attention and learning to minimize the risks.
Yellow Journalism in my opinion. Sensationalism at its best...or worst. Peace, Lynne
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Hardluck
Social climber
Just who wants to know...
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Hmmm. Strange way to start a thread. Hope he wasn't posting while climbing. Wait. Maybe iPhones are responsible for the spike in injuries amongst our ilk.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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"One good thing, according to the study, us old guys are less likely to fall!"
Or to climb at all. Another injury prevention strategy - unless you then get repetitive strain injury or defective posture from sitting at the keyboard and yapping on ST.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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It reminds me of one of Sheridan Anderson's cartoons in the Summit Abominable Mountaineering Calendar -- Surgeon General's Warning: Falling may be dangerous to your health.
John
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skrzyp
Trad climber
CA
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The press-release is based on a scientific article that is about a survey of rock-climbing related injuries. The article itself is not sensationalist. A pre-publication pdf copy of the article is here:
http://climbingnarc.com/downloads/Injuries.pdf
The actual data reported on are 846 injuries that occurred between 1990 and 2007, culled from a national emergency department surveillance database. Although there were 1845 "mountain climbing" related injuries, the subset analyzed had to have the key words "rock", "wall and/or "gym in their descriptions. Those described as related to "mountaineering" or "mountain climbing" were omitted unless the key words were mentioned. Also worth noting is that only 175/846 had any information on fall height.
It seems likely that the sample analyzed was biased towards gym-related injury and those occurring at smaller crags or bouldering. Also, the estimates of population injury figures (e.g. 40,282 injuries treated in emergency departments over the period) are extrapolated to the whole U.S. pop. using survey weighting methods. This is done with no knowledge of how many people actually climbed during this period, or of the geographic distribution of climbing as a sport. The trends over time are estimated this way as well.
Bottom line: this is just a breakdown by various factors (e.g. gender, type of injury) of 846 injuries observed in a "representative" sample of emergency departments in that period. It is useful information to those managing emergency-related services. It says nothing about whether or not the prevalence of injury among climbers is increasing, but does indicate that the sport is becoming more popular.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Wow! There's a positive correlation between length of fall and seriousness of injury- who would have thunk?
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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1ZV502150396403553
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Ray-J
Social climber
east L.A. vato...
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Yes, you fall, no gear, you probably hit the ground.
There should be a college or university level class on it.
Then injury rates may go down.
For the graduates.
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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There is sensationalism in the article because it is reporting the "more than 40,000" ER visits as a fact not an extrapolation from 800+ examples.But the study itself uses faulty logic. It is often said that statistics can be bent to prove anything, and this is a clear example. I'm not a statistician by any means, but it is clearly extemely poor practice to make an extrapolation such as the one here---reaching a large figure based on a relatively small sample in selected locales and then expanding it based upon the total population. Climbing, and therefore climbing injuries, is largely restricted to limited locales and populations ( I know that gyms have expanded the geographic range but still must account for a minor number of injuries).So while a relatively high incidence of injuries might occur in, say, the Boulder area, almost none will occur in places like Indianapolis, Miami, etc. So to take the numbers for Boulder and to assume similar rates elsewhere is just nonsense. 40,000 injuries even over 19 years---the AAC's accident reports would be encyclopedic.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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in good conscience (as we so often disagree), i must in this case agree with my brother Rockjox on this one. for there are _sooooooo_ many new "climbers" out there, and most just out of a gym.
seems to me that gyms of quality and conscience (most are) should offer free or truly inexpensive instruction on how to translate from plastic on plywood into the world of actual rock.
just a couple hours on actual rock reviewing how to set up a bomber toprope with gear, and the basics of descending (or backing off) 'schport' routes, would be huge. i urge those involved with gyms to do this.
~~~
i'm certain i'm not alone in being astounded (and often freaked) at some of the stuff i've seen on actual rock in recent years. very few of these n00bies are actually stupid, or cocky. they just haven't had the benefit of having an older dad/mom actually show them.
it's not at all hard to approach such n00bies and help them get it... well, if not perfect, at least not obviously dangerous.
me, i just walk up and say "wow, you have excellent natural skills... you might want to set up your toprope (or lower off your schport route) like this... it's easier, faster, and the combined experience of all in our tribe has demonstrated it to be _way_ safer."
never yet had a n00bie get rattled by this. much the opposite -- they much appreciate the couple little (though functionally massive) 'tips'. takes 5 minutes, max.
i'm certain that most all of my fellow older dads/moms do this all the time. for the few who haven't yet tried to do it, i urge you to do so. if for no other reason that there is often a beer in it for you.
i was a n00bie, once. perhaps you were too. and many a great soul stepped up and helped me get it right BITD -- and without making me feel like a twerp. me, i feel the need to pass that on. hopefully presented with the same "i'm ok/you're ok" attitude (i try).
i mean, sure, you can go for laughs with your pals recounting the insanity you saw at the local crag last weekend. but that get's old, fast. perhaps better to step in, gently, and offer a coherent alternative.
well, fwiw...
i don't want to play conscience for anyone, as it's everything i can do to play conscience just for me.
~~~
finally, i'm surprised that the study noted didn't mention head injuries (even 'minor' concussions) among the most common climbing ER admits. for i've seen way too many of those of late -- driven a bunch of them to the local ER, in fact.
and this on boulders as often as roped routes. my own take on this is that pretty much everything in the body heals (eventually) -- all except for significant head shots. so i climb, and "offer options" accordingly.
^,,^
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skrzyp
Trad climber
CA
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I agree that the article doesn't acknowledge the flaws in their national estimates. They do give confidence intervals on the 40000+ figure (23,477.6–57,086.6), which does account for some uncertainty.
I don't think they re trying to create a sensation as much as alert those in the field of emergency medicine that these type of injuries may be becoming more common. The data necessary to do good estimates (e.g. accounting for regional prevalence of climbing) are not available.
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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The article I was referring to as being sensationalized was the US News article in the original post, not the journal article itself. I agree that there aren't sufficient baseline statistics upon which to base an accurate extrapolation, which is why the study shouldn't have attempted to make one in the first place. They could have just written up their findings, noted the likely geographic limitations and left it at that. The problem is that this isn't merely an academic exercise, but, because such things do get published and distorted in places like US News, then read by property owners, land managers, insurance companies, etc and accepted by them as gospel they have serious real-life impacts on issues such as access, ability to get insurance, etc. We have enough actual issues to deal with--there likely is an increase in accident rates for the reasons posted by others--but we don't need astronomical false statistics to make matters even worse.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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I climbed today.
I have an iPhone.
I am aflicted by a slight rash.
There must be a corelation!
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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As long as you don't use your MePhone to text while driving. Then you may be afflicted by a slight crash.
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