| Background: Snowboarding is a popular sport and previous research has shown that terrain park (TP) injuries are more severe than regular slope injuries. TPs contain man-made features. Jumps, kickers, half-pipe, and mushroom facilitate aerial manoeuvres. The objectives were to determine overall and feature-specific injury rates, risk factors for injuries, and injury profiles.;Methods: A case-control study with exposure estimations was conducted at an Alberta TP. Cases were snowboarders injured in the TP who presented to ski patrol and/or local emergency departments (EDs). Controls were non-injured snowboarders in the TP. Injury assessment, demographics, and environmental risk factors were extracted from the ski patrol Accident Report Form (ARF) and ED medical records. Injured snowboarders were telephoned to determine feature used when injured and additional risk factors. The number of runs in the TP, risk factors, and feature use for non-injured snowboarders were collected during two seasons. Overall and feature-specific injury rates were calculated. The association between injury and feature use was calculated using logistic regression. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine the association between feature and injury type and body region.;Results: There were 334 injured snowboarders. The overall injury rate was 0.75/1000 runs and highest for jumps and half-pipe (both 2.56/1000 runs) and lowest for rails (0.44/1000 runs) and quarter-pipes (0.24/1000 runs). Compared with rails, there was a significantly increased odds of injury for half-pipe (OR: 9.63; 95% CI: 4.80, 19.32), jumps (OR: 4.29; 95% CI: 2.72, 6.76), mushroom (OR: 2.30; 95% CI: 1.20, 4.41) and kickers (OR: 1.99; 95% CI: 1.27, 3.12). For those injured on aerial features, the odds of a head/neck (OR: 2.58; 95% CI: 1.37, 4.85) or trunk injury (OR: 3.65; 95% CI: 1.68, 7.95) were significantly higher relative to upper extremity injury. There was no significant difference in injury type and aerial versus non-aerial feature use.;Conclusions: Injury rates and odds of injury were highest for jumps and half-pipes and injured body region varied by feature. Further research is required to ensure snowboarder safety in the TP. |
