Self-reported chronic injuries in climbing: who gets injured when?

OBJECTIVES: To assess self-reported chronic injuries in climbing and possible connections with gender, experience and style of climbing. METHOD: Retrospective survey. SETTING: Web-based questionnaire. PARTICIPANTS: 667 active climbers (385 with chronic injuries, 289 males and 96 females). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Climbers who had experienced at least one chronic injury during the last 6 months. RESULT: About 2/3 of male outdoor climbers had experienced a chronic injury. The three most frequent sites of injury were fingers (41.3%), shoulders (19.4%) and elbows (17.7%). The most frequent injury for the females were fingers (29.2%), shoulder (21.9%), wrist (12.5%), elbow (11.5%) and foot/ankle (10.4%). The most frequent injuries for the male were fingers (45.3%), elbow (19.7%) and shoulder (18.7%). Respondents who preferred outdoor climbing were more prone to injury than others. CONCLUSION: Fingers were the most prevalent site of injury regardless of level of experience, gender and whether level of expertise is reported in terms of bouldering or route climbing. There seems to be a gender difference in respect of site of injury prevalence and a different prevalence of injuries according to style of climbing and different levels of expertise. Furthermore, the use of the suggested way of reporting levels of expertise to compare between bouldering and route climbing seems to be robust with no huge differences in terms of incidence level of different injuries.