Inujuries in Climbing - Atlantic Canda, research and you

[Diamox]

Climbers,
To date no research has been published about injuries in Climbers in Canada or the subgroup of boulderers. As well the evidence for finger taping is poor and the suggested use not validated. I am contemplating starting the first of such here in Halifax. Would there be any support from the climbing community in Atlantic Canada to be subjects for my research? Topics of interest are finger injuries, taping, epidemiology, and acute injuries occurring in the gym and at competitions. This is all very preliminary but I will have finished my literature review by winter at which time more specific plans will evolve.

Please feel free to contact me via PM or this forum.

Cheers,
Peter Inkpen, MD
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Resident.
Nova Scotia Rehabilitation Centre, Halifax, Canada

[martha]

You should contact Laura Misener. She did a PHD for Kine that was something about climbing, injuries (I think) and women specifically.

PM and I'll send you her email.

[Fred]

I would say the most common injury is "tendonitis" golfers elbow. I've been living with it for too long now.

Finger tendons are more a problem when new to the sport I find. Unless you fall and catch yourself on a pocket or something.

I'd be happy to be a subject. You should see my permanently deformed toes too. That's a whole medical journal article in its own.

[john]

I posted a journal a while ago on circumferential taping. It was a medicl paper I believe and ne you would likely be interested in.

[Diamox]

The most common injury as described in the literature is actually of the pulley sytem; then tenosynovitis comes in next (encompasses tendonitis).

[ben smith]

there has been an article written using pull tests on cadaver A2 pulleys- believe the conclusion was that the tape was not effective but the original hypothesis was not specific enough to climbing to generate meaningful results. this was due to ristricitons on possible experimental design ( lack of climbers willing to allow destructive pull testing on their tendons in a climbing scenario. I read over the paper in a bit of depth- its interesting but again not specific to climbing in that taping is not always used to prevent finger pulley rupture- uses include range of movement restriction, mental reminder of the injury, etc. and the experimental design was not (in my opinion) the best.

lots of work to be done here! good luck- I can be a subject depending on the test you rig up.

[Diamox]

Ben,
I must say that the paper by Warme et al. in 2000 that you refer to is very well done. It was the first of it's kind and the needed first step. The same year Schweizer published an in vivo experiment of similar set-up. They concluded much the same (ie. tape will not prevent pulley ruptures) but found that the tape did absorb an amount of force and confirmed earlier work regarding pulley forces.
In general I believe that tape should be used as an adjunct to the rehab process; not to prevent finger injuries in the health finger. What I'd like to know is if taping would help with non-surgical chronic finger pain.

Cheers,

[ben smith]

maybe you are right in that the paper was a necessary first step- but like I said its not climbing specific and doesn't look at the reasons climbers tape- rehab vs injury prevention. hardly any taping is done on a previously healthy finger- mostly on pulleys already partially or fully torn during the healing process, this is where i think the reseach should have been focused- cadavers with partial pulley trama taped vs untaped. I think we are arguing the same point regarding tape during rehab. havent read the schwiezer paper yet- sounds like it makes sense- like I said my problems with warme et al.'s paper came mostly for it's limited benefit to climbing specific rehabilitation- although I may not have stated that as clearly as could have- that was what I was refering to as problems with the experimental design. not problems with the actual methods used. also although pulley rupture is the most reported injury- probably due to the acute vs chronic nature of the injury, I believe that elbow tendonitis might be more wide spread but largely unreported esp. in the U.S. medical system.

again sounds like an interesting study- good luck