Spinal injury in alpine winter sports: a review

Alpine winter sports have become increasingly popular over recent decades, with a similar increase in accident incidence. This review provides an overview of the most recent literature concerning spinal injury epidemiology, mechanisms, patterns and prevention strategies in the context of alpine winter sports.

The PubMed, Cochrane Library, and EMBASE databases were searched using the keywords spine injury, alpine injury, spine fracture, skiing injuries, snowboard injuries. 64 published studies in English and German met a priori inclusion criteria and were reviewed in detail by the authors.

There are various mechanisms of injury in alpine winter sports (high speed falls in skiing, jumping failure in snowboarding) whilst regionality and injury severity are broadly similar. The thoracolumbar spine is the most common region for spinal injury. Spinal cord injury is relatively rare, usually accompanying distraction and rotation type fractures and is most commonly localised to the cervical spine. Disc injuries seem to occur more commonly in alpine winter sport athletes than in the general population.

Despite awareness of increasing rates and risks of spinal injuries in alpine winter sports, there has been little success in injury prevention.