Student needing help

gregmatthew

Hi I am currently looking into collar bone and shoulder injuries as part of my degree, no injury is impossible to stop so the aim of the project is how to help lower the risk of these injuries. Breaks are the second most common injury behind lacerations, which people are admitted to hospital for. The most common being clavicle breaks. Obviously the natural instinct when falling from the bike is to protect yourself by out stretching your arms, where the force travels to the collarbone quiet often breaking it. As I previously said the aim is not to stop it completely just to help reduce the force the collar bone receives during a crash to try and reduce the chance of a break. Thank you very much for you time.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8XYVPMK

craker

Q10 only makes sense if the answer to 8 was No.
Q 6 What protection do you currently wear... well it depends what I'm doing. I do have body armour but only put it on when doing mad downhilling (v. rarely). Helmet mostly, glasses sometimes etc etc.

And I have broken my collar bone. I think stacked a jump at Cwmcarn and landed heavily on my back so I didn't take an blow to my collar bone per se.

tomisitt

Surely the point of the collarbone is that it breaks...better to bust your collarbone than your your wrist, radius, ulna or humerus, I would have thought. I ride a motorcycle as well, and have bust my collarbone despite ample body-armour in the shoulders of my jacket. Can't really see how it's possible to reduce clavicle fractures other than with bulky padding, which is OK on a motorcycle but not ideal for a cyclist. But good luck with the project!

ovi

Some motorcycle gloves have the scaphoid protection plastic slider on the palm of the glove so your hand slides instead of digging in, check out knox body armour/gloves website.

Anonymous

Who told you that clavicle breaks are the most common fracture that gets admitted to hospital? I have seen one clavicle fracture get admitted to hospital in my career and it was a horrendous one that punctured a lung. For every one clavicle fracture that gets admitted I would estimate there are 1000 broken neck of femurs or unstable tibia/fibula combos.
I would guess that less than 1 in 10 clavicle fractures are as a result of a fall on an outstretched hand as well. The clavicle is much more succeptable to a direct blow to the shoulder. The distal radius or scaphoid is much more likely to go first before a clavicle IMO. Scaphoid fractures can be a complete PITA as well.
Good luck with the project, though hope you get something worthwhile from it.