Amongst the findings, Ashwell discovered: 86 per cent of the 2009 patients were male, August is the worst month for injuries, 12 per cent of the injuries suffered in 2009 were considered potentially threatening to life, limb or function, and more than 75 per cent of the bones broken in the bike park were upper body bones.
Ashwell found that the most typical bike park injury victim is a 26-year-old male injured between 1 and 4 p.m.
Speaking from his home in Seattle, Ashwell said this is the first of what he hopes will be a number of studies into mountain bike safety. He'd like to see safety equipment design changes that will make a difference by protecting riders from the most common injuries that result in weeks or months of lost time at work while injuries heal.
"An unexpected finding was the number of closed head injuries despite the mandatory helmet requirement," wrote Ashwell. "Of riders seen at the clinic, 11.2 per cent had suffered a closed head injury as diagnosed by the clinic physician without the use of computed tomography. Although most of these were minor, there were eight cases in which patients had marked decline in neurologic function."
He said the term "closed head injuries" is a reference to concussion.
"Further research should include exposure information as well as specific information about which trail features are associated with injury, evaluate the long-term outcomes after bike park injuries, assess the costs of care after injury, and attempt to identify acceptable injury rates in this increasingly popular sport," Ashwell wrote in his study conclusion.
Read more here: http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistl ... id=2308707
