Climbing Injuries, Operative vs Nonoperative, and Recovery

Hi All!  My name is Zach Lum.  I am an orthopaedic surgeon at UC Davis Medical Center.  I am also a climber. I recently surveyed a group of climbers regarding if they have had any injury, what types of injuries, if they required surgery or not, and how long their recovery process was.  I had a reasonable number of people, but more means I can analyze more data and will be able to paint a clearer picture regarding type of injury and recovery.  

If you have sustained a climbing related injury and havent filled this out, please do so!  Share with friends.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FYGSHXC

Here is my preliminary data!

Patients recorded multiple injuries, in order of decreasing injury type and not mutually exclusive: 79% hand & elbow, 35% foot & ankle, 33% shoulder, 15% knee, 6% spine, 6% hip, and 13% other.  150 (70%) patients underwent no treatment, 44 (20%) underwent formal physical or occupational therapy, 21 (10%) underwent surgery.  Of those who underwent surgery, 19/21 (90%) were satisfied.  Recovery back to pre-injury level took on average 10 months (range 0-5 years).  Nonoperative patients recovered on average of 9 months, while surgical patients took 18 months on average to return to their pre-injury level.  While 5/21 (23%) surgical patients were considered to still recovering and thus not at their pre-injury level, 4/198 (2%) of nonoperative patients were considered to have never recovered and 34/219 (17%) were considered to be still recovering.  Difference in recovery was not significant between the surgical and nonsurgical group (p=0.4581).
The most common injured body parts sustained in rock climbing were the hand, wrist, shoulder, foot and ankle.  A majority of these injuries were amenable to nonoperative treatment or formal physiotherapy.10% of patients underwent surgery.While recovery time increased from 9 months in the nonoperative group to 18 months in the operative group, the number of patients able to return to sport at their pre-injury level (81% vs 77%, p=0.4581) was no different.  

You could provide separate boxes for each injury and the associated recovery time, for those with a long list of climbing injuries :)

Did the study differentiate between surgery as a first option, and surgery following alternative treatment? 

I'd like to help with your data collection, but I got stuck because after "list your injuries" it asks questions for which my answers would vary for each injury. 

Dr. Lum,

Why can't I find you on this search tool?

https://physicians.ucdavis.edu/medicalcenter

Mark NH wrote: ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/orthopaed…

Thanks, Mark!

I got stuck too due to multiple injuries which required different treatment. 

I took your survey. As others have said, it would be nice if there was a way to indicate specific injuries and surgeries in different fields instead of as a list in the same field. 

Hi everyone.  Yes, there are limitations to the study. Recovery for each injury is different.  Another more specific study would be in order to look into specific types of injuries, but that can take 10-15 minutes of survey time - something many climbers do not have the patience to do.  Also, we are looking at overall recovery and return to sport at the same level.  

There are plenty of ways to interpret the raw data, and as the numbers grow, there will be more power to interpret the info.  Thanks.

Well right, but overall recovery and return to climbing are different for every injury. If you only want data about one injury per climber, maybe you could ask specifically about the most recent injury, or most serious injury. Asking climbers to list all their climbing injuries and then ask questions relating only to one is a bit confusing. For what it's worth, Id rather spend 15 minutes on a thorough survey than 5 minutes on one I end up quitting partway through because the survey design physically doesn't allow me to answer the question as asked. But I can only speak for myself.

Anyway, good luck with your research! 

So after collecting more data, it looks like return to sport after injury may be better for nonoperative than operative. RTS at same level or better is 67% for operative and 81% for nonoperative. It also may speak to the severity of the injury.

Of course there will always be limitations, but I think this gives people an initial idea of expectations and management strategies. More info to be expected

I filled out the survey, have had 2 climbing injuries, torn labrum/partial rotator cuff, and torn flexor tendon, both non-operative treatment and both back to 90%+ strength within 6 months post injury.