Journal Article

A Sex- and Age-Specific Analysis of the Impact of COVID-19 on Adventure Sports Injuries: 10 Years of National Injury Data

Yendluri, Avanish, Nietsch, Katrina S., Balachandran, Uma, Koehne, Niklas, Cannada, Lisa K., Frank, Rachel M., Parisien, Robert L., Locke, Auston, Spiker, Andrea M.

2025

Overview

Background: Adventure sports have grown in popularity over the past several decades, with evidence of more significant growth since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous literature has described head and neck injuries for this group of sports, although neither general musculoskeletal injuries nor injuries during the pandemic have been described. Purpose: To determine whether rates of adventure sports injuries changed from before to during and after the pandemic, using 10 years of national emergency department (ED) data, and to describe injury trends and demographics of injured patients. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods: All data were extracted from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), a publicly available database operated by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission of approximately 100 US EDs representative of hospitals across the United States. NEISS was queried using its Query Builder function for adventure sports injuries from January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2022. Consistent with previous literature, our definition of adventure sports included snow skiing, snowmobiling, snowboarding, skateboarding, water skiing, mountain climbing, surfing, mountain biking, and motocross. Linear regressions and paired t tests were utilized for data analysis. Results: Based on the National Estimate (NE), there were 60,005 cases (NE = 2,534,437) of adventure sports–related injuries. Injuries were more common in males for all sports. The most common diagnosis was “fracture” for 5 of the 9 included sports. From 2013 to 2022, there were significant increases in skateboarding (P = .04; β = −0.660; 95% CI, –6618.181 to −244.437), surfing (P = .008; β = −0.778; 95% CI, –1018.419 to −209.193), and mountain biking (P = .009; β = 0.770; 95% CI, 279.601 to 1441.466) injuries. When comparing prepandemic (2013-2019) with peri- and postpandemic injuries (2020-2022), the only sports with a significant increase in injury rates during and after the pandemic were mountain biking (P = .0002; 95% CI, –8712.70 to −4097.96) and motocross (P = .0002; 95% CI, –12824.66 to −6230.77). Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that from 2013 to 2022, there were significant increases in skateboarding, surfing, and mountain biking injuries. There were significant increases in injury frequency from before to during and after the pandemic for mountain biking and motocross. Male athletes experienced the greatest percentage of injuries in all 9 sports, with adolescents comprising the most affected age group in the majority of these sports. These data may be useful in the development of injury awareness and prevention programs.

• Publisher: SAGE Publications,Sage Publications Ltd,SAGE Publishing
• Subject: COVID-19 / Motorcycle racing / Mountain biking / Pandemics / Skateboarding / Sports injuries