A 48-year-old surfer sustained a 1cm linear laceration to his anterior lower leg while surfing. The waves were 3-4 feet the water temperature was 58℉ (14℃), and turbid. The surfer stated he was surfing over a rocky bottom, bumped his leg against something, and continued surfing. Upon removing his wetsuit, he noted a small linear […]
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Scombroid, Ciguatera, Fugu, Amnestic Shellfish Poisoning. Weird names for weird diseases all caused by eating seafood. Most surfers are aware that these diseases exist, but unless you are a toxicologist, it is likely that you are somewhat hazy about the exact causes, symptoms, and treatments of these interesting maladies. Given the strange and often overlapping […]
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Introduction & Background To date, there is a lack of published documentation regarding injuries sustained and treated during professional surfing events. Calculating an injury rate for recreational surfers is difficult because the nature of recreational surfing makes it challenging to determine the population at-risk.1 To overcome this obstacle we developed an injury surveillance tool, to […]
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Marc Adams, DO graces us with excerpts from his soon-to-be published book Surf Stronger, Paddle Longer. Marc presents a compelling, unique, and somewhat unorthodox treatise on human biomechanics and the physical and emotional flow of surfing based on osteopathic teachings and the Alexander technique. If you’d like to learn how to avoid the destructive forces […]
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Just like its sometimes fun to ride an old board that hasn’t seen the light of day for a few years, here at SM headquarters we’ll occasionally dust off an old issue of the Journal and revisit an article that particularly strikes our fancy. ‘Course cutting-edge medicine changes a bit over time, so we may […]
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Overview Head and neck injuries are the most common type of surfing injury, accounting for 37% of all injuries (Nathanson et al., 2002). The majority of these are superficial trauma or lacerations, but more severe injuries such as concussions represented 16% of injuries to the head and neck in Nathanson’s survey-based study. It is suspected […]
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Case Presentation I didn’t start surfing until my early 20’s, but once the bug hit, it hit hard and I began plying the chilly waters of New England year-round. By the age of 40, I noticed that the earpiece of my stethoscope was bumping up against something in my right ear canal. When I stuck […]
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Surfing is perhaps the oldest “extreme sport” in existence, and though its precise origins are unknown, most authorities agree that the sport originated in Polynesia over 800 years ago. The first written accounts of surfing appear in the journals of English explorer Captain James Cook, who witnessed Tahitians body surfing and riding waves in outrigger canoes in 1777 […]
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