Surfing is a widely enjoyed sport, with participants both at the recreational and professional level, and is gaining popularity worldwide.1 There are an estimated 37 million surfers worldwide, which includes 2.7 million surfers in the United States (2015), 2.3 million surfers in Australia (2013), and 500,000 surfers in the […]
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A 58 year-old male was wave-sailing (windsurfing in surf) and attempting to come to shore. As he was carrying his gear shoreward he was hit by a breaking wave, and the 33 cm single fin on his board caused a large laceration to his left lower leg. The patient described severe bleeding to his leg which could not be […]
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Bleeding from an injury can be quite alarming, particularly for a surfer in the water where assessing an injury and quantifying the amount of bleeding can be difficult. Any significant bleeding should prompt a return to shore to further assessment. Most hemorrhage can be controlled by applying pressure directly over the wound […]
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The Pipe Masters is the final event of the World Surf League Men’s World Championship Tour. We analyzed surfing-injuries documented by the onsite Medical Team during the Pipe Masters competitions over the 5-year period (2013-2017). The sum of all acute injuries treated during the study-period and sum of all surfer-heats (athlete exposures) were used to calculate an […]
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Surfing USA: an epidemiological study of surfing injuries presenting to US EDs 2002 to 2013. From the surfing mecca of Rochester, NY comes a thorough epidemiologic study of surfing injuries presenting to emergency departments across the US. While a number of surfing-injury studies have been hospital-based, they all looked at injuries from a single hospital.1,2,3 This is the first
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HPI 63-year-old male surfer in Northern California was found floating in shore break by fellow surfers. He was wearing a full wetsuit and last seen riding a 5-foot wave, perhaps 5 minutes before the incident. When other surfers arrived to assist, the victim was not breathing spontaneously, had limp muscle tone and was blue. He […]
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A 29-year-old female was seen in the emergency department with a chief complaint of laceration. Earlier in the day while surfing she sustained a laceration from the fin of her surfboard and was subsequently dragged in the water. Bystanders helped her out of the ocean, at which point she reported significant hemorrhage from her left […]
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Chief Complaint: A 57 year-old female who had been body boarding presented with a chief complaint of neck pain, weakness and pain in her arms and hands. History of Present Illness: The patient had been bodyboarding in 2-3 foot shorebreak over a cobblestone bottom when she was pitched forward by a wave and hit the […]
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