Mounted search and rescue

[una.smith@att.net]

Good lead, Chris!

Quotes from "Equestrian Injury Study: Chest, Head Injuries Common" by
Erin Ryder (June 12 2007, http://www.thehorse.com/viewarticle.aspx?ID=9778)

> > 45% of the patients required surgery.

The study concerns patients seen at a trauma center.  Arguably, riders whose
injuries are less severe are less likely to be transported to a trauma center.


> > The average patient was male, 47-years-old, had 27 years of riding 
> > experience, and was riding Western.
> 
> > "We are very surprised to see the experience of the badly injured 
> > riders and their mounts," said Robert Mulloy, MD, FRCSC. "Calgary has 
> > a lot of money and there are hundreds of expensive and rarely ridden 
> > horses. We expected that they would have been the cause of the 
> > injuries and they were not."

That's because those horses are rarely ridden.  No riding = no riding injury.

On the other hand, the article states that of 7,941 trauma patients, only
"151 (2%) were injured while participating in an equestrian activity."

Note that there may be a significant selection bias here.  There may be a
far larger number of experienced riders who never sustain severe injuries,
so are never seen in a trauma center.

A similar phenomenon is well documented in the polo community.  The
majority of severe injuries are in experienced polo players.  However,
*on a per-hour-of-play basis*, the players with by far the highest risk of
severe injury are so-called competitive beginners.  These are players 
who are just beyond the beginner lesson stage, who have begun to play
polo at high speeds in competition.  Another factor:  often these novice
players are riding horses that they have just recently acquired or may be
riding for the very first time.

I think there is an important lesson here for MSAR.  We probably all know
of experienced riders who are very confident in their riding ability when
they join an MSAR unit, only to discover that MSAR may involve far more
challenging ("technical") riding than they ever imagined.

My recommendation is that we all keep in mind that, no matter how
experienced a new recruit may be in other respects, if they have no prior
experience in MSAR then they are a novice.  If they have never riden a
trail across a steep slope (one of my pet peeves), then they are a novice
with respect to steep slopes.  Etc.

In case the web article goes away, here is a citation to the full article:
"Equestrian injuries: incidence, injury patterns, and risk factors for 10
years of major traumatic injuries," May 2007 issue of The American
Journal of Surgery. Chad Mulloy, G. Ball, Jill E. Ball, and Andrew W.
Kirkpatrick.

    Una Smith
    New Mexico