Helmets can help reduce the number of severe head injuries – especially skull fractures – in young skiers and snowboarders, finds a new study published in the March issue of Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics.
Researchers at the University of Vermont and Maine Medical Center collected six years of data from two level-one trauma centers in New England, focusing their findings on 57 children under the age of 21 who had been treated there for skiing or snowboarding-related injuries.
They found that one-third of the children had worn helmets while engaging in the winter sports. Only 5.2 percent of the helmeted children showed any signs of skull fracture, compared to 36.8 percent of the remaining two-thirds.
Previous studies have shown that severe head injuries are responsible for 80 to 88.9 percent of skiing-related deaths, and one study indicated that 71.1 percent of children admitted to hospital for a skiing injury had suffered from a skull fracture.
"We are able to show that helmets are associated with reduced skull fractures in skiers and snowboarders seen at the hospital. Given that skull fractures can be an indication of severe brain injury and sometimes associated with intracranial bleeding, a reduction in skull fractures is a compelling finding," said Dr. Anand I. Rughan, one of the study’s authors.