Skiing accidents in the past 15 years

For the last 15 years a statistical analysis of distances skied and of alpine skiing accidents has been performed in the Davos-Klosters skiing area, a 'closed' skiing area, where every skier has to return from the top to the bottom station. Distance skied is measured by vertical drop in 10(6) km determined by calculations from frequency surveys by lift-operators. About 2.5 million km per season have been skied during the past years, a number remaining constant for the last 15 years. In the same time the requirement for rescue-transports in this area has shown a decline of 46% to 288 transports per season due to a decrease of the number of injuries with initial immobilization. Therefore the so-called transport-quotient (one rescue-transport per 10(4) km of vertical drop skied) has decreased from its initial value of 4 to 1 per 10(4) km. During the same time all winter sport injuries were analysed at the hospital of Davos. About 90% are injuries caused by alpine skiing resulting in a total of 17,246 alpine skiing injuries for the last 15 years. There is a great decline in the incidence of lower leg fractures with a contrary development of knee injuries. Today half of the lower leg injuries are knee injuries (280 knee injuries out of a total of 1250 alpine skiing accidents per season). There is a gradual increase of upper extremity injuries from 17% of all skiing injuries in 1972 to 35% in 1976. A Swiss multicentre study on skiing safety shows comparable injury patterns in other skiing areas. The average injury-severity measured by several parameters is declining.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)