Systematic Review of Methodology in Ski Injury Research

To perform a systematic review of ski injury literature focusing on methodology for data collection. Medline and SPORTDiscus databases were searched using key words "ski* injur*" and "snowboard* injur*", limited to human studies in English in the past 20 years. Inclusion criteria were original studies that looked specifically at injuries to skiers or snowboarders and described data collection methods. Two reviewers screened the articles for inclusion. For any discrepancies, discussion with a third reviewer was conducted to reach consensus. For each included article, the methods section was reviewed and categorized according to method type. 185 studies met inclusion and exclusion criteria. Almost all (179, 97%) were observational. Only 5 were experimental including 3 randomized controlled trials. There was one methodological study. Of the 179 observational studies, 8 (5%) were cohort, 29 (16%) case-control, 117 (65%) cross-sectional, 22 (12%) case series, and 3 (2%) were prospective case studies.