New research from the University of British Columbia suggests that mountain bikers could be at a higher risk of spinal cord injury than other high-intensity sports, including hockey, skiing and snowboarding.
The research, published recently in the journal Neurotrama Reports, documented 58 spinal cord injuries linked to mountain biking in B.C. between 2008 and 2022.
Over that same period, researchers found just three such injuries among hockey players. The researchers also found mountain bike-related injuries were seven times higher than for skiing and snowboarding in recent years.
The number of annual spinal cord injuries linked to mountain biking was comparable or higher to those connected to amateur football across the entire United States.
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“I’m not sure that everybody really kind of recognized that they could actually suffer a life-altering and fairly catastrophic spinal cord injury and be essentially paralyzed from the neck down with really no use of your hands or your legs,” study author Dr. Brian Kwon told Global News.
“That’s a very different kind of reality than, you know, falling and breaking your collarbone even.”
Kwon, a spine surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital, launched the study after seeing “staggering” numbers of injuries among people who used mountain bike parks.
Kwon analyzed data from the Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry and found that most of the injured were healthy young men. A staggering 93 per cent were male, with an average age of just over 35 years old.
More than three-quarters of the injuries were recorded in people ejected over their handlebars, and nearly nine in 10 patients were wearing helmets.
About 12 per cent were hurt in a collision, while just under nine per cent were hurt in other ways.
Just 4.5 per cent of patients weren’t wearing any protective equipment.
“We would like to understand better the circumstance of the actual conditions that they suffered their injuries at,” Kwon said.
“We think there might be some element of timing, and that towards the end of the day when people are more fatigued, that might be also when injuries are occurring.”
More than one in four of the injuries recorded in the study were “motor complete” spinal cord injuries, meaning a total loss of motor function below the injury site. That includes 14 people who experienced tetraplegia/quadriplegia (affecting arms and legs) and 13 people who experienced paraplegia (affecting legs).
The study estimated that those injuries will cost the province nearly $200 million over the patients’ lifetimes, covering health care, rehabilitation, patient expenses and loss of productivity.
