Rock Climbing Injuries Treated in Emergency Departments in the U.S., 1990–2007

Coordination in Climbing: Effect of Skill, Practice and Constraints Manipulation

“…Furthermore, factors that constrain coordination during training have a significant role on an individual's capacity to adapt successfully to constraints on performance [5]. Whilst, climbing performance has been addressed by different scientific disciplines, including, injury risk [2,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], testing [3,14], physiology and anthropometry [15,16], strength and conditioning [17], therapeutic [18] and engineering design [19,20], currently, existing reviews taking a skill acquisition approach have been limited in scope (and include the coordination of hand-to-hold-surface interactions [21,22] and pedagogical approaches [23,24]). A comprehensive evaluation of constraints on coordination in climbing is needed for understanding what adaptations support skilled coordination and how to design training contexts that support its transfer.…”

Feet injuries in rock climbers

“…A ground fall from as little as 8 feet high can lead to serious fractures of the calcaneus, talus and ankle joint (Figures 6, 7) [21] . Other ground fall injuries are distortions and ligamental injuries (ankle sprains) [6,21,73] . These injuries are on the increase with the growth in bouldering as a sport, but they are also fairly common with sport climbers who fall before reaching the first bolt or are dropped by their belayer [21] .…”

“…Schöffl et al [61] analysed 604 injured climbers (sport climbing, indoor climbing) and reported 247 of 604 (40.9%) injuries involved the hand, 9.1% the foot. In contradiction two studies that analysed climbing injuries treated in American hospitals or emergency rooms [5,73] reported that most climbing injuries involved the lower extremities and resulted from big swings into the wall or big falls [5,73] . Bowie et al [5] found most fractures (63%) in rock climbers on the lower extremity, primarily the ankle, tibia or fibula.…”

“…As this injury mechanism was quite frequent 10 years ago it was addressed by the Medical Commission of the UIAA [85] (International Mountaineering Association) and nowadays the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) has a rule that these intersections must be closed in competitions (Figure 8) [76] . Typical feet injuries in rock climbers [1,2,7,8,10,21,73,78,84] : (1) Contusion; (2) Calcaneus fracture; (3) Talus fracture; (4) Ankle fracture; and (5) Ankle sprain with lateral ligament injury.…”

Wilderness medicine

“…[6] Retrospective surveys have shed light on the nature and frequency of traumatic injuries sustained while climbing. [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Advances in cervical spine management and immobilization, opiate-based pain control, and invasive procedures are being discussed. [47][48][49][50][51] Advanced techniques such as shoulder reduction are being taught to lay providers.…”