Head and Neck Injury Potential With and Without Helmets During Head-First Impacts on Snow

Dressler, Dan; Richards, Darrin; Bates, Eoin; Toen, Carolyn Van; Cripton, Peter A.

doi:10.1520/stp104525

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, to our knowledge, this is the first study to look at the dynamic response of groomed snow in a high‐speed impact. The objective was not to reflect the diversity of the snow, but rather to characterize two typical snow conditions on ski slopes: an “early morning hard snow” and an “afternoon soft snow.” Because of the frequent changes in snow properties, experimental tests were done directly on a groomed ski slope to avoid any manipulation or temperature modification (Fierz et al., ; Dressler et al., ), and three impact velocities were chosen (Fig. ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Head impact in a snowboarding accident

Bailly¹,

Llari²,

Donnadieu³

et al. 2016

Scandinavian Med Sci Sports

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To effectively prevent sport traumatic brain injury (TBI), means of protection need to be designed and tested in relation to the reality of head impact. This study quantifies head impacts during a typical snowboarding accident to evaluate helmet standards. A snowboarder numerical model was proposed, validated against experimental data, and used to quantify the influence of accident conditions (speed, snow stiffness, morphology, and position) on head impacts (locations, velocities, and accelerations) and injury risk during snowboarding backward falls. Three hundred twenty-four scenarios were simulated: 70% presented a high risk of mild TBI (head peak acceleration >80 g) and 15% presented a high risk of severe TBI (head injury criterion >1000). Snow stiffness, speed, and snowboarder morphology were the main factors influencing head impact metrics. Mean normal head impact speed (28 ± 6 km/h) was higher than equivalent impact speed used in American standard helmet test (ASTM F2040), and mean tangential impact speed, not included in standard tests, was 13.8 (±7 km/h). In 97% of simulated impacts, the peak head acceleration was below 300 g, which is the pass/fail criteria used in standard tests. Results suggest that initial speed, impacted surface, and pass/fail criteria used in helmet standard performance tests do not fully reflect magnitude and variability of snowboarding backward-fall impacts.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Head impact in a snowboarding accident

Bailly¹,

Llari²,

Donnadieu³

et al. 2016

Scandinavian Med Sci Sports

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To investigate correlation between helmet impacts onto rigid anvils and snow surfaces, studies have performed helmet impacts onto snow surfaces. Dressler et al 153 investigated the protective potential of a ski helmet, which was certified to the ASTM standard (148). Drop tests at 4 m/s were performed onto soft and hard snow samples with the latter being frozen overnight.…”

Section: Fallsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Head Injury and Impact Biomechanics in Recreational Skiing and Snowboarding

Patton

McIntosh

Hagel

et al. 2020

Muscle Ligaments and Tendons J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background. Skiing and snowboarding are popular competitive and recreational sports with associated head injury risks from impact hazards. Understanding head injury hazards and risks in snow sports can inform injury prevention measures, such as helmets, education and environment design of runs and terrain park features, to manage injury risk. Aim. To identify and discuss (a) the proportion and incidence of head injuries and effectiveness of helmets, (b) circumstances, situational events and characteristics of head injuries and (c) head impact biomechanics in recreational skiing and snowboarding. Methods. A narrative literature review was performed. Results. Head injuries comprise up to 38% and 29% of all injuries in skiing and snowboarding, respectively. Skull fractures were found to comprise nearly half of all moderate to severe head injuries in alpine sports across all studies. The most common intracranial injury in skiing and snowboarding was cerebral contusion and subdural haematoma, respectively. Fatal head injuries in skiing are rare with an incidence of approximately one death per one million skier-visits and less than 1% of all skiing head injuries resulted in death. The majority of head injuries were sustained by novice and intermediate level skiers and snowboarders during falls on mild or moderate gradient slopes. Head injury cases occurred in terrain parks were more common in snowboarders than skiers. Fall-related head injuries to skiers are typically in the forward direction with an impact to the front of the head, whereas snowboarders fall rearward and impact the occipital region. Helmet use has increased in recent years, but recent studies have observed an unexpected reduction of the protective effect of helmets in skiing and snowboarding. Alpine sports helmet standards require linear drops onto rigid anvils, but the correlation with snow surfaces is unknown and no helmet standard requires an oblique impact test. Significant protective effects of helmets have been found for collisions and falls onto hard snow. Conclusions. Alpine sport helmet performance standards should more closely reflect the boundary conditions of impacts to skiers and snowboarders associated with head injury. Administrative and engineering controls may also reduce the risk of head injury in skiing and snowboarding.

show abstract

“…Typically, these studies provided some estimate of head injury risk in the test impacts by referring to previously published studies, such as human cadaver impact experiments [174], animal studies [25,175], and tissue level models [176][177][178]. Established head injury risk curves were also referenced, such as those developed in automotive applications for specific surrogates such as the Hybrid III [114,120,162,163,166,179], or developed through reconstruction of real-world helmeted football incidents [172,[180][181][182][183].…”

Section: Assessment Criteria and Thresholdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is appealing to evaluate headgear using a surrogate designed to respond like the human head to impact. Hence, the biofidelic impact response of the Hybrid III is commonly referenced as justification for it being used in the reviewed new headgear tests [34,93,112,179]. However, the biofidelity of the Hybrid III headform for headgear impact testing has relatively little validation.…”

Section: Human Head Test Surrogatementioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Impact Testing Methods for Headgear in Sports: Considerations for Improved Prevention of Head Injury Through Research and Standards

Whyte

Stuart

Mallory

et al. 2019

Journal of Biomechanical Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standards for sports headgear were introduced as far back as the 1960s and many have remained substantially unchanged to present day. Since this time, headgear has virtually eliminated catastrophic head injuries such as skull fractures and changed the landscape of head injuries in sports. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is now a prevalent concern and the effectiveness of headgear in mitigating mTBI is inconclusive for most sports. Given that most current headgear standards are confined to attenuating linear head mechanics and recent brain injury studies have underscored the importance of angular mechanics in the genesis of mTBI, new or expanded standards are needed to foster headgear development and assess headgear performance that addresses all types of sport-related head and brain injuries. The aim of this review was to provide a basis for developing new sports headgear impact tests for standards by summarizing and critiquing the following: (1) impact testing procedures currently codified in published headgear standards for sports and (2) new or proposed headgear impact test procedures in published literature and/or relevant conferences. Research areas identified as needing further knowledge to support standards test development include defining sports-specific head impact conditions, establishing injury and age appropriate headgear assessment criteria, and the development of headgear specific head and neck surrogates for at-risk populations.

show abstract

Head and Neck Injury Potential With and Without Helmets During Head-First Impacts on Snow

Cited by 6 publications

References 27 publications

Head impact in a snowboarding accident

Head impact in a snowboarding accident

A Review of Head Injury and Impact Biomechanics in Recreational Skiing and Snowboarding

A Review of Impact Testing Methods for Headgear in Sports: Considerations for Improved Prevention of Head Injury Through Research and Standards

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About