Abstract
Objectives
To investigate the association between air jacket usage and rider injury severity
in equestrian eventing competition falls world-wide.
Design
Retrospective data analysis.
Methods
An analysis was conducted on Fédération Equestre Internationale data for 1819 riders
who fell wearing an air jacket and 1486 riders who fell while not wearing an air jacket
from 2015 to 2017. Injury data were categorised as either ‘no/slight injury’ or ‘serious/fatal
injury’. A chi-square test determined whether an association was present between injury severity
category and air jacket usage and binary logistic regression determined the effect
size of this association.
Results
As a result of falls, 3203 riders sustained no/slight injuries and 102 sustained serious/fatal
injuries. While 55.0% of riders who fell were wearing an air jacket, they represented
67.6% of the serious/fatal injury outcomes. Air jacket usage was significantly associated
with serious/fatal injuries in falls (X² = 6.76; p = 0.009). Riders wearing an air jacket had 1.7 times (95%CI 1.14–2.64)
increased odds of sustaining a serious or fatal injury in a fall compared to riders
not wearing an air jacket.
Conclusions
Riders wearing an air jacket were over represented in the percentage of serious or
fatal injuries in falls compared to riders who only wore a standard body protector.
Further research is needed to understand the reason(s) for this finding. It is recommended
that additional data on injury outcomes, rider characteristics and the biomechanics
of falls be examined in future analyses, and that air jacket and body protector characteristics
be further investigated.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 25, 2019
Accepted:
May 20,
2019
Received in revised form:
May 10,
2019
Received:
August 30,
2018
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
