Snowboarders, especially young males, are at risk of injuring their arms and/or internal abdominal organs after a fall while snowboarding.

That‘s the conclusion of a study in which Alison McCrone MD analyzed all of the medical charts for children ages 6 to 21 who were brought to a pediatric trauma center in Buffalo between January 2000 and March 2007 with injuries related to snowboarding.

Of 213 patients during that time, 79 percent were male, and 55 percent were in the 12- to 14-year-old age group, McCrone wrote in the March issue of the journal, Pediatric Emergency Care. Today McCrone is an assistant professor of emergency medicine and medical director of the Upstate Golisano After Hours Care.

Among the injuries in those patients, 58 percent were wrist or shoulder injuries; 27 percent were head or neck injuries; 19 percent were trunk injuries; and 10 percent were knee or leg injuries. McCrone says of those with trunk injuries, 74 percent involved injury to internal organs, most commonly the spleen. She also found that children who fractured or dislocated their upper extremities were at higher risk of suffering abdominal or pelvic trauma.

In another study from the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington, researchers looked at patients of a ski resort clinic from 1988 to 2006 to determine that wrist injuries were the most common snowboarding injury.