However, before you can experience any sport, you need to do a good job of protection!
01
The Chinese youngster won the gold medal, and ski protection became the focus
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, due to the outstanding performance of Chinese skiers such as Gu Ailing and Su Yiming in winning gold and silver, the mainland took off the hat of "ice strong and snow weak" in one fell swoop. After enjoying the heroic gestures of Princess Gu and Xiao Su in the broadcast, more and more people are eager to try it and want to stand on the snow field themselves and experience the fun of skiing.
However, as a kind of "extreme sports", it is difficult to get started with the sports essentials, the cold and dry snow environment, and the high-intensity ultraviolet blessing... These factors have made the threshold for participation in skiing much higher.
Therefore, in addition to skiing events, all topics related to "ski protection" have also become the focus of heated discussion on social media.
On February 9, a topic called "Orthopedics at the End of the Snow Trail" became a hot search entry on Sina Weibo. The origin of the entry comes from the original Weibo of a doctor with the ID @Orthopedic Mao Rui: "Today there are nine surgeries, 7 are ski-ski, 4 forks, 1 patellar dislocation, 1 ankle joint, 1 meniscus, ski injuries in 10 to 15 percent, 300 million people on the ice and snow 30 million people live in orthopedics." At the end of the slope is orthopedics."
As soon as the microblog came out, it was immediately responded to by various big V accounts. Among them, there are a large number of media accounts that pay attention to the dynamics of the Winter Olympics, there are ski enthusiasts who joke about their injury history, and there are many people who are struggling with whether to enter the pit skiing sport.
At present, Dr. Mao Rui's original Weibo is no longer visible
However, in addition to the discussion, the problem of the professionalism of this microblog in sports medicine has also made many industry practitioners question: "Ski injuries are in ten to fifteen percent", where does this key data come from?
In other words, is skiing really such a dangerous sport?
02
Orthopedics at the end of the slopes? Wrong!
Before analyzing, let's throw out the first conclusion: "Ski injuries in ten to fifteen percent", is not a widely recognized data worldwide, and it is a figure that is much higher than average in many statistics.
First of all, the probabilistic calculation of exercise risk is a complex and precise mathematical problem. The study of this data can help us understand the causes and risk factors of sports-related injuries and improve the health protection of the public and professional athletes participating in sports.
In this study, the main objects studied by many institutions and colleges are "professional athletes" or "athletes who have received professional training for a long time" of the corresponding projects, rather than ordinary enthusiasts or experiencers of sports.
The fundamental reason is that only professional athletes can complete the corresponding actions with high standards of science in a large number of actual battles and tests, and can accurately describe the pathological process of their injuries after injury, helping researchers accurately collect and analyze data on sports injuries.
Finally, through the analysis of the conclusions, the researchers will give the corresponding sports protection plan (such as increasing medical resources, arranging more medical personnel, improving infrastructure equipment, etc.), improve the safety factor of sports, so as to reduce the possibility of athletes being injured again.
Secondly, after collecting athlete data, the analysis agency will also conduct unified research based on many reference data such as the athlete's injury history, epidemiological incidence ratio, and clinical incidence of cases.
Therefore, due to the different research subjects, the large and complex data, and the continuous updating, the "probability of ski injury" is actually a very difficult question to define the standard answer. Different institutions around the world are giving different research answers every year.
As for where the "ten to fifteen percent" data came from, Dr. Mao Rui did not give the source of his data. However, even if this data is placed in many existing studies, this is a relatively rare large-scale number.
The National Ski Areas Association, for example, has long been committed to research on ski safety issues. They are also relatively rare professional sports agencies that have the ability and resources to document and analyze snow accidents nationwide.
In other words, in their research subjects, there are not only professional athletes, but also a large number of snow lovers and tourists, which also has stronger reference value for the public.
In 2011, the NSAA published a ski safety study called Facts About Skiing/Snowboarding Safety. They collected records of all the nation's snow accidents over a decade from 2000-2011.
According to the NSAA, an average of about 40.6 people died each year while skiing during the 10-year period, and the number of people who were hospitalized for serious injuries (such as total paralysis, semi-paralysis, serious injuries to other body parts such as the head) was an average of 44.6 per year.
In 2011, when the report was released, about 60.5 million people were involved in skiing in the United States, with a death toll of 47 and 60 seriously injured.
In addition, the NSAA also gave several other comparative casualty data in the report: for example, in 2009, the number of people who died in traffic accidents in the United States was 35,900, the number of bicycle deaths was 800, the number of deaths from swimming drowning was 2,400, and even died from unintentional public falls on the street, there were 8,600 people...
According to the latest data from the United Nations, an average of 18.2 people die from road traffic accidents every year for every 100,000 people in the world. Compared with these data, the average number of casualties in ski accidents is almost "small and big".
In the mainland, there are also many professional institutions engaged in the corresponding research of ski sports protection. At present, a more recent authoritative public information that can be found on the Internet is a report entitled "Analysis of the Injury of a Mass Skier in a Large Snow Resort in Chongli, China" published by journal peking university: medical edition in the second issue of 2021, and the research institutions are the department of sports medicine of the Third Hospital of Peking University and the department of sports medicine of the Chongli Branch of the Third Hospital of Peking University.
In this report, the research institute collected basic information on all injured skiers who visited a large snow resort medical station in Chongli during the snow season from November 2017 to March 2018 and from November 2018 to March 2019. The number of skiers, the number of injuries, the cause of the injury, the type of injury and the location of the injury were compared during the two snow seasons.
Journal of Peking University: Medical Edition, No. 2, 2021
According to the report, a total of 753 injuries occurred in the two snow seasons surveyed, with an average daily injury of 4.53 cases and 4.46 cases per 1000 skiers, respectively. The average number of daily injuries per 1,000 skiers in the two snow seasons was low, at 2.20 and 1.38 respectively. The report also concludes that differences in injury rates between months may have less to do with snowfall and more likely to be related to the amount of footfall.
Comparison of injury rates in different months during the two snow seasons
Combined with the later statistics of the Chongli District Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, the total flow of people in the seven major ski resorts in Chongli from November 2018 to March 2019 has reached 1.06 million, and the number of people injured in a snow season is about 4,000.
Therefore, according to the statistics of this report, the ski injury rate is far lower than that of Dr. Mao Rui, "ski injuries are 10 to 15 percent".
In addition, even if "ski injuries are 10 to 15 percent", it is already a way of not much respect in the medical community to deduce that "300 million people live in orthopedics on the ice and snow".
In past exercise pathology, the term "risk" has been used very broadly, and many scientists have habitually equated the ratio number with risk to reflect the safety of sports. For example, we often hear the saying in our lives: "Football basketball has a higher injury rate than volleyball, which means that football has a greater risk of injury." In fact, this method of computational inference is no longer scientific.
According to the American sports journal Journal of Athletic Training, the scientific definition of "injury risk" is now more accurate, which is specific to the average probability of injury of each athlete/sports participant, rather than the "one-size-fits-all" average probability of the public, which is more in line with the basic concept of modern medical research.
All in all, whether compared with other extreme sports or mass sports such as football and basketball, the danger of skiing is definitely low.
03
Pay attention to safety, you can also enjoy skiing
At the beginning of the birth of skiing, "the end of the slope is orthopedic" may be an apt expression. However, since the early 1970s, in the context of the gradual global popularization of skiing, the safety and security measures of skiing are constantly improving, in addition to alpine skiing, skill skiing and other skiing with professional thresholds, and now the serious injuries such as Achilles tendon rupture and fracture caused by skiing are greatly reduced.
Most injuries caused by collisions with other skiers, obstacles, or rapid descents are abrasions, lacerations, muscle strains, etc., or ultraviolet damage to the ski slopes caused by not wearing good ski glasses (also known as "snow blindness").
According to the "Analysis of Injuries of Public Skiers in a Large Snow Resort in Chongli, China", among all 753 injured samples, 144 were moderately injured due to fractures or bone fractures, or cranial concussions and visceral injuries, and only 1 was severely injured; the remaining patients' injuries were mostly judged to be mild injuries such as contusions, muscle or joint injuries.
However, we need to emphasize once again that the problem of ski injury rates through an article to "debunk" ski injury rates is not to make everyone despise ski safety, we are precisely to tell everyone that the safety of skiing should not be taken lightly because of the small data.
Draft: Dr. Ding Xiang Data source is "Analysis of the Damage of Volkswagen Skiers in a Large Snow Resort in Chongli, China"
After all, the premise of participating in any sport is to do a good job of warming up and protecting, and participating in related training under the guidance of professionals, which is true for participating in any sport.
Therefore, we can understand Dr. Mao Rui's good intentions to remind everyone to pay attention to protection and safety, but it is not necessary to choke on some not very scientific conclusions or data, and stay away from skiing.
In short, under the premise of ensuring safety, wear ski clothes, wear helmets, tie ski glasses, and receive full professional training, you will definitely be able to experience your own skiing fun.
Otherwise, what awaits you at the end of the line is not just "orthopedics" as a department.