[Epidemiology of internal knee injuries in Alpine skiing]

The incidence of sport injuries in Switzerland is twice as high compared to traffic injuries. Soccer and alpine skiing play the most important role in sport injuries. For the last twenty winter seasons all winter sport injuries were analysed at the hospital of Davos. About 85% are injuries caused by alpine skiing resulting in a total of 24,684 for the last twenty years. There is a great decline in the incidence of lower leg fractures with a contrary development of knee injuries. The treatment-quotient (amount of knee injuries in alpine skiers per 10(4) kilometers of vertical drop skied) has increased over the last seasons. Nowadays one part of four skiing injuries is an injury of the knee ligaments. In skiing areas favored by beginners, we have observed an incidence of knee ligament injuries three times as high compared to other areas. Since 1986 we have evaluated 206 patients operated for knee ligament injuries, 44% with unidirectional and 56% with multidirectional instabilities. We report about the preoperative data.