Adventure and extreme sports have developed significantly and gained enormous popularity over the past two decades, and are now performed by adventurous elite athletes as well as the recreational adventure sportsman. These sports, by definition, involve element of increased risk, and are usually performed in beautiful, exciting and remote locations or in extreme environments, far away from medical assistance. As more and more people are enjoying adventure sports, unfortunately increased numbers are becoming injured as a result. Future research is progressing alongside the sport development, to allow the sport mechanisms, injury patterns and predisposing factors to be better understood. It is the hope of all researchers to make the sports safer without detracting from their adventurous nature. This book combines the Editors love to the sports with their life as sports surgeons. The aim and scope of this text is to bring the ‘sports medicine’ involved in each of these sports into one volume. Each sport and discipline is explained together with their subtle similarities and differences, the common injury mechanisms, patterns of injury and treatment options and finally, the mental and physiological aspects of it all. In this book the Editors hope to deliver useful valuable information to surgeons, physicians, physical therapists and whoever treats or has interest in these amazing activities. |