On March 25, 1996, on an average day at Zuma Beach, 17 year-old Jesse Billauer dropped into a wave at the punchy California beach break. He pulled inside a barrel and got thrown headfirst into a shallow sandbar. The impact broke his sixth cervical vertebrae, and he instantly became a quadriplegic. At the time he was one of the
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Surfer’s myelopathy is a perplexing condition in which young, healthy, first-time surfers develop a non-traumatic spinal cord injury, sometimes with permanent neurologic sequelae. Why first-time surfers? What is the pathophysiology? What is unique about surfing? Understanding more about this rare but serious condition will help
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30-year-old male who overfoiled (foil lifts above water-level) and crashed at high speed. His foot was grazed by the tail fin (stabilizer) of his foil causing a superficial laceration and contusion to the medial aspect of his right mid-foot as seen in photos above. The wound was irrigated, and steri-strips were placed across 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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It is with much sadness that we write this tribute to SMA member and surf doctor extraordinaire, Terry Farrell, DO, who died unexpectedly while mountain biking near his home in Maine on September 22, 2018 at age 61. Terry was an emergency physician in York, ME and was an avid surfer, swimmer, and boater. Though […]
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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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Here at SM headquarters, we often have some interesting flotsam, (in this case ambergris), that crosses our bow. A few years ago, we received a large beat-up cardboard box containing the original, handwritten letters from the “Ask the surf Docs” column of Surfermagazine circa 1989, edited by our own Mark Renneker, MD. Some of the better letters […]
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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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