ABSTRACT
Snowboarding is one of the most popular winter sports worldwide, particularly among adolescents and young adults. In United States during the 2012/2013 season, approximately 7.3 million people practiced snowboarding, compared to 8.2 million skiers. Among all snowboarding injuries, the upper extremities comprise the body region most frequently reported injured. The risk of wrist injuries is especially high in snowboarding and much higher than in alpine skiing. Based on a literature review, backward falls result in twice as many fractures as forward falls. The described fixation models reproduce the most important boundary conditions of real world but do not reflect possible details such as small modifications in the position of the straps. The backward fall was simulated with twenty models of wrist protectors based on different principal concepts, including dorsal and/or palmar splints, different splint lengths, and without or with palm padding. The most common injury mechanism of a radial fracture is described as a comprehensive load to a hyperextended wrist.
