What are the most common injuries that you treat for snowboarding and skiing?

Do you see more injuries from snowboarding than you do from skiing? What are the most common injuries that you treat for each sport?

In general, I believe that I see more injuries from snowboarding.  In particular we see a lot of upper extremity trauma with snowboarding. Wrist and elbow injuries are very common as well as shoulder injuries including acromioclavicular separations and labral tears. Ski injuries I believe are less common and typically involve knee injuries and tibia fractures.

Skiing and snowboarding can lead to more “overuse” or chronic injuries, in particular anterior knee pain or patella femoral pain syndrome.  These sports are a quadriceps dominant activity (you use your thigh muscles a lot) and as such can lead to the anterior knee pain.  Proper warm up, cool down and stretching exercise is the treatment we employ to treat this condition.

With the recent influence of the “X games” and other adrenaline-based extreme sports, both snowboarding and skiing will continue to produce many injuries.  Be smart, and have fun and ask yourself if your mom would approve of the stunt you are about to try!