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Surfing Injuries – Literature Review

Oct 30, 2013 ~ Author Andrew Nathanson, MD, FACEP, FAWM

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 and a year later saw surfers riding waves while standing atop long wooden surfboards in Hawaii. Before the arrival of Westerners to Polynesia, surfing was an important cultural and recreational activity, particularly in the Hawaiian Islands where the chiefs maintained exclusive rights to the best surf breaks while commoners surfed elsewhere. By the early nineteenth century, the sport fell into a rapid decline under the influence of Western missionaries who discouraged surfing as a frivolous pastime [ 1 ].

Surfing’s revival is widely credited to the charismatic Hawaiian waterman and Olympic swimming champion “Duke” Kahanamoku who introduced the sport to California and Australia in the 1910s. Commercialization of the surfing lifestyle through movies and music in the early 1960s led to rapid growth of the sport along both coasts of the United States and Australia and a gradual spread into Western Europe, Japan, Brazil, and Peru. During this era, the introduction of lighter foam-core fiberglass surfboards and neoprene wetsuits catapulted expansion of the sport beyond a small cadre of rugged individualists and into the mainstream [ 1 ] .

The 1970s witnessed a revolution in surfboard design, with boards getting ever shorter, lighter, and more maneuverable. Shorter boards led to a new style of surfing which featured aggressive, carving, short-radius turns up and down the face of the wave, in contrast to the straight-line trimming and nose-riding of the past. These boards encouraged surfers to ride steeper, more tubular-shaped waves and allowed the surfer to generate speed along the length of fast-peeling waves. By the mid-1980s, surfers began experimenting with airborne maneuvers above the lip of the wave. A few years later, eleven-time world champion Kelly Slater began routinely landing aerials, giving him a competitive edge in surf contests.

Interest in big-wave surfing, which first developed along Hawaii’s North Shore in the 1950s, was rekindled in the late 1980s as surfers ventured out to previously unridden surf breaks such as Maverick’s (California), Dungeons (South Africa), and Killers (Todos Santos Island, Mexico) where waves over 10 m in height could be ridden given the right conditions. Catching these swiftly moving mountains of water required fast-paddling, long, tapered surfboards which tended to lack maneuverability and could become dangerously airborne during takeoff due to their large surface area. Though surfers were eager to push the size envelope, there were a few breaks such as Jaws (Maui) that on rare occasion produced even larger, faster-moving, gargantuan-sized surf. These waves appeared to be moving too fast to be caught by conventional means; no matter how daring, it seemed as if a paddling surfer could not generate the speed required to catch these behemoths.

Read more: Chapter 7: Surfing Injuries

Written by:

Andrew Nathanson, MD

Posted in Acute Surfing Injury, Chronic Surfing Injury, Literature Review - Tagged Literature review: Surfing Injuries
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Summer 2018 Issue #31 Table of Contents

  • Letter from the Editor
  • No Other Options (a true story)
  • Big Wave Surfing: A physician’s perspective
  • Origins of the Paddle Out Ceremony
  • Case Report: 63 y.o. male surfer “found down”
  • What Happened to Zika?
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Summer/Fall 2017 Issue #30 Table of Contents

  • Letter from the Editor
  • Don’t Eat the Fish!
  • A Surfing Life
  • The SMA Barefoot Doctor Course
  • The Surfer Health Study
  • Terry Farrell Interview
  • Case Report: Eye Trauma from a Surfboard

Summer 2016 Issue #29 Table of Contents

  • Letter from the Editor
  • Catching Waves: Perspectives of Physicians Who Surf
  • Should you Frika about Zika?
  • Case Report: A 29-Year-Old Female Surfer with a Thigh Laceration
  • Case Report: Central Cord Syndrome in a Bodyboarder
  • Images from Surfing Medicine
  • Druku’s Life
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  • SMA Conference Report – Nicaragua 2016

Summer 2015 Issue #28 Table of Contents

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  • 2013 Triple Crown + HIC Pro Injury Report
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  • Larger Than Life, Don James, MD
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  • SMA Nicaragua Conference Report, May 28 – June 4, 2015

Winter 2014-15 Issue #27 Table of Contents

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  • Surf Stronger, Paddle Longer
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Fall 2013 Issue #26 Table of Contents

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  • Surfer’s Ear – The Bane of Cold Water Surfers
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  • A Non-Healing Surf-Wound
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Fall 2020 Issue #33 Table of Contents

  • Letter from the Editor
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