gms | German Medical Science

Objectives/Interrogation: Horse riding is a highly dangerous sport. The athlete's partner is an unpredictable and independent animal over 600 Kg and 2,7 m that can reach 60Km/h. Some studies discuss whether riding horses may be riskier than a motorcycle.

The most common mechanisms of injuries are falling from the horse. From all the injuries, upper limbs seems to be the one with higher prevalence.

The riders usually wear helmet for head protection and boots and specially designed trousers for lower limb protection, while the upper body and limbs remains unprotected. The gloves protect from attritional damage, but they are not useful for rotational finger injury caused by the reins.

The horse riders usually grip the rein in their first and forth interdigital commissural space, leaving the fifth digit out. In the event of twist or a fall, like after a runout, the rider can easily release the rein from the first commissure, but opening up the forth space isn't as easy, and the rein may wrap around the small finger rotating it.

The aim of this study is to report a series of fifth finger fracture in horse riders.

Methods: We retrospective reviewed 204 cases of hand injury in a single center among horse riders from 1994 to 2018. We evaluated epidemiologic data and the pattern of injury.

Results and Conclusions: There was a male: female rate of 18.25, the mean age was 26.3 (S.D 13.4) years old. The non-dominant hand presented most lesions 57.8%.

Of all injuries 73 (35.7%) were fractures and 21 (28,76%) affected the fifth ray. There were 12 metacarpal, 6 proximal phalanx and 3 middle phalanx fractures.

We would like to call attention to this particular injury - fifth finger's comminuted rotational fracture - related to rein holding technique in horse riding.