Beware of the force of the horse: mechanisms and severity of equestrian-related injuries.

The research study is focused on understanding the incidence, mechanisms and severity of equestrian-related injuries among individuals in two Dutch hospitals over a period of five years.

Study Objective and Methods

• This research aimed at determining the incidence, the mechanisms, and the severity of equestrian-related injuries (ERIs). It focused on two hospitals in the Netherlands; VieCuri Medical Centre in Venlo and Maastricht University Medical Centre+ in Maastricht, covering a period from July 2010 to June 2015.
• The study was based on a retrospective inclusion of all patients who visited the emergency departments of the two hospitals with ERIs during the study period, with clinical data extracted from their medical records.

Research Findings

• The data showed that a majority of ERIs occurred to mounted riders. Among these incidents, almost 95% were caused by falls from horses.
• Eristrian-related injuries among riders who were not on horseback were typically due to being kicked by the horse or being trapped somewhere accounting for 42.5% and 30.1% of injuries respectively.
• The study found anatomical variations in injury sites depending on whether the riders were mounted or not. While upper extremities (43.8%) were most frequently injured in mounted riders, the lower extremities bore the brunt (40.5%) among the unmounted group.
• Interestingly, though, the unmounted group had a relatively high percentage of facial injuries, contributing to 9.7% of all reported injuries.
• The study indicated that 17% of all ERIs necessitated hospital admission. The median Injury Severity Score was found to be 5 (on a scale of 0 to 75, with 75 being the highest possible score) in the admitted population and 1 in the whole population.

Study Conclusions

• This research concluded that horseback riding was a high-risk activity in terms of likeliness of physical injury. While prior studies looking at ERIs had primarily focussed on those admitted to level 1 trauma centres, generally outside of Europe, which had a higher likely severity of injury, this study provided a broader sample to evaluate the general severity landscape.
• A key consideration from this research was that previous studies may have overestimated the severity of ERIs in the general population due to their focus on admitted patients in level 1 trauma centers.