Wilderness event medicine

Wilderness Event Medicine (WEM), that is, the care of large groups of people participating in events in remote areas, is a rapidly growing subspecialty of wilderness medicine. Our goals are to report the injury rates from one wilderness event and to suggest ways to advance this emerging field.

We describe a 1-day wilderness hike and compare the injury rates from this one event with rates from other urban and wilderness events.

Of the total 350 hikers, 6 persons presented for medical evaluation (5 dehydration and 1 orthopedic), yielding a rate of 17 evaluations per 1000 person-days of exposure. Only 1 person (or 2.9 per 1000) required medical assistance beyond oral rehydration. These rates are comparable to rates reported for urban events and other wilderness activities.

According to very limited reports, the rates of injuries in wilderness events are similar to those for urban events. We recommend defining a wilderness event as an event with more than 200 participants and where the time from injury to care at a medical facility is likely to be greater than 1 hour. We also suggest the creation of a database of wilderness events, including standardized terms for the descriptions of activities, terrain, injuries, and medical response. Such a database could be used to help event planners anticipate and perhaps prevent injuries and to prepare effectively for those injuries that do occur.