Lower extremity injuries in snowboarders.

The popularity of skiing and snowboarding has increased tremendously over the past few decades. Whereas skiing has been an established winter sport for some time, snowboarding was created only in the 1960s. The great surge in popularity of snowboarding was sparked by its inclusion in the 1998 Winter Olympics. With increased participation in these winter activities has come a tremendous rise in injuries, despite equipment changes and promotion of safety behavior. Although participants in these sports share many common lower extremity injuries, the unique characteristics of skiing and snowboarding lead to marked differences in injury rates and mechanisms of many specific injuries of knee, foot, and ankle. In this article, we review the literature on the epidemiology of lower extremity injuries associated with snowboarding and the associated mechanisms of injury.