| On helmets and skiing... |
[Jan. 5th, 2009|12:48 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  indifferent | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Metric - Live It Out | ] |
Alright, here's the deal, yo. I went skiing this week (twice) as part of the whole quick New Years vacation with friends, and there were lots of people wearing helmets on the hill. I wasn't one of them. I've read in other places that increases in helmet wearing in certain sports (ie. hockey) has been correlated with a reduction in concussions and brain injuries but an increase in spinal and neck injuries. I was interested in seeing what's going on in skiing, since I should likely start renting a helmet or invest in one at some point. Here's an excerpt from a more scientific-based, objective article I found:
"Our research and the research of others has consistently shown a 35- to 50-per-cent reduction in head injury if a head injury is defined as “any injury above the neck.” Helmets prevent close to 100 per cent of relatively minor head injuries (lacerations), but are far less effective at preventing serious head injury (concussions, closed head injury, subdural haematoma and so on). In terms of overall fatality rates nationwide in the U.S., there has been no decline (statistically significant or otherwise) even though nearly half the onslope population now wears a helmet.
Interestingly enough, what has changed is the modality of death—but not the rate. For the ski seasons starting in 2000-01 through 2004-05, there were 76 instances of fatality in the U.S. (We are not able to find reliable data from other countries, but are confident that the overall numbers wouldn’t vary significantly.) Of those 76, 28 (37 per cent) were wearing a helmet at the moment of death. This figure of 37 per cent is considerably higher than the helmet utilization rate in the general population at that time. For those who died while wearing a helmet, some form of head injury was listed as the leading cause of death 46 per cent of the time. For those who died and were not wearing a helmet, some form of head injury was listed as the leading cause of death 72 per cent of the time."
The rest of the article you can read here.
The important conclusions to take from this article were these: 1) the use of a helmet is associated with a reduction in the impact G forces put on the head; 2) when crashing into a hard fixed object, even with a helmet the likely outcome remains a fatal injury; 3) during an impact on icy snow, the use of a helmet could be the difference between a significant head injury (possibly life-threatening) and a minor head injury; 4) helmets make no significant difference during impacts with soft snow; 5) the majority of fatal impacts in snowsports are multi-trauma events, and a helmet cannot prevent injuries to other areas of the body.
So... a helmet will protect me if I'm skiing on ice or if I only hit my head when crashing into a tree at speeds less than 40km/h... Eh. Better than nothing, I guess.
Michael |
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