A study conducted by the University of British Columbia (UBC) has revealed that 58 mountain bikers in the province suffered spinal cord injuries between 2008 and 2022, according to an analysis of data gleaned from the Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry. While these injuries didn’t result in death, “these are devastating injuries,” said study senior author Dr. Brian Kwon, a professor of orthopedics and Canada Research Chair in Spinal Cord Injury at UBC. “There’s nothing quite as excruciating as having to tell a patient that they may never walk again.”
Of the 58 spinal cord injuries, 27 (46.5%) “were motor complete spinal cord injuries,” according to an article from the UBC. “This includes 14 people who experienced tetraplegia/quadriplegia (affecting arms and legs) and 13 people who experienced paraplegia (affecting legs).”
The riders who suffered spinal cord injuries were 93% healthy young males, with an average age of 35.5 years old. 77.5% of the injuries were the result of an endo, i.e. being “propelled over their handlebars.” 86.3% of those injured were solely wearing helmets, with an additional 9.1% wearing helmets and other body armor. “Only 4.5 percent wore no protective equipment at all,” according to the article.
“36 percent of spinal cord injuries recorded in the study occurred at Whistler Mountain Bike Park.”
Even though the study pulled data from a registry covering the entirety of British Columbia, a shocking 36% of these spinal cord injuries were incurred at Whistler Bike Park.
A “staggering” number of injuries compared to other sports.
Kwon notes that this number of spinal cord injuries is “staggering” compared to high-impact sports that are traditionally studied, such as hockey and American football. Over the same period of time, “researchers found just three such injuries among hockey players” in Canada, according to an article on GlobalNews.ca. The number of spinal cord injuries among mountain bikers is also seven times higher than it is among skiers and snowboarders.
Kwon also compared the injury rate to American football, saying in an interview: “In a population of 330 million people, [the USA] sees seven spinal cord injuries [per year] from one of the most violent collision sports out there. And in our population of 5.3 million in BC, we see four to five. In one year, we saw 12.”
The injury rate of mountain bikers is so high, and the results are so catastrophic, that the title of the study calls this “A Cause for National Alarm.”
The cost of spinal cord injuries
In addition to the physical, mental, and emotional toll of such injuries, there are very real monetary costs associated, too. Of the 27 individuals who “suffered motor complete SCI (14 tetraple-gia, 13 paraplegia) with estimated average lifetime costs in Canadian Dollars of $4.8M and $4.5M each, respectively,” according to the study.
The study goes on to estimate that these 58 injuries (it appears not to factor future injuries into this number) will cost British Columbia $195.4 million CAD over the individuals’ lifetimes. This includes “lifetime health care and rehabilitation costs, patient expenses, and other economic costs such as loss of productivity.”
How do we reduce this “staggering” number of spinal cord injuries?
“There are a lot of factors to consider including how we assess and communicate risk, the importance of rider education, the role that personal safety equipment can play, and how we can safely design trails and resorts,” said Kwon.
Kwon said in an interview that he doesn’t “view it like an adversarial thing with the mountain bike parks. I think that they need to understand that this is happening, and hopefully that they’ll want to work with us, because I think that’s really the best way forward.”
“We all have a shared interest in preventing these catastrophic injuries from occurring,” he concludes.
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