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International audience; For the general public, BASE jumping is considered the ultimate extreme activity. Among BASE jumpers, those using wingsuits are generally perceived as the most experienced but also as the most risk-taking. Starting from this observation, we wanted to know whether wingsuit users differed in their psychological characteristics from other BASE jumpers. More specifically, we hypothesized that wingsuit users would be characterized by higher levels of mental toughness and by lower levels of harm avoidance. We also expected them to use more mental training techniques than the other jumpers. To this end, we conducted a vast survey on a sample of 183 BASE jumpers. Contrary to our hypotheses, the results did not reveal any significant difference in psychological characteristics between wingsuit users and other BASE jumpers. This absence of significant differences is discussed and recommendations for the use of mixed or multi-methods in the study of extreme sports are proposed.

Adventure and extreme sports (AESs) are associated with high risk of injury and even death. This has important ramifications for sport, education, medical and health professions and has led to disc...

Balance is a complex motor skill requiring fine central processing of vestibular, visual, and somatosensory information to control and produce postural actions (Pankanin, Dobosiewicz, & Mietkowska, 2018). Without balance, humans normal functioning could not take place. Thus in activity that requires coordination, fast actions, and complex motor skills, such as during sports, balance becomes extremely relevant. Postural control is essential key component in athletic performances. The participations to extreme sports have grown in the past years, thus with it also the development of extreme sport medicine. Professional athletes are required to constantly improve performances, and one aspect of focus is balance. Similarly, injured patients are often forced to rehabilitate their vestibular system through proprioceptive and somatosensory exercises. In this chapter, we will brief report some of the posturography that athletes could use in training and for rehabilitative purposes.

Extreme aerial sports are a large subgroup of extreme sports. Participation in these activities has grown exponentially in the last decades, often surpassing traditional sports. Although fatalities related to extreme aerial sports are often generically ascribed to polytrauma, an autopsy can reveal unexpected elements in many cases. Forensic studies may lead us to ascertain different causes of death, such as anaphylaxis or myocardial infarction and together with eyewitness reports, they may make it possible to clarify the chain of events that led to an accident. This review paper may be critical not only for medico-legal reasons but also to provide useful information for the development of preventive measures, specific recommendations and safety systems. The paper aims to review available data about fatality rates, causes and dynamics in extreme aerial sports and to draw some possible conclusions about the role of forensic examinations in these sports.

Background. Traditional monitoring of athletes during sports has long been hampered by bulky, complicated and tethered systems. In the past decade, this has changed due to the miniaturization of sensors and improvement of systems to store and transmit data. These systems have been integrated into textiles to create ‘smart clothing’ which has been so ubiquitous that a review of the recent literature is crucial for understanding its full potential and potential use in extreme sports. Methods. An electronic data base search was performed from 2003 to April 2019 for full length articles including “Smart” AND “Clothing” OR “Clothing” AND “Sport(s)” written in English with human subjects. Articles were evaluated according to the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Results. Twenty-four studies resulted in 18 systems comprised of 22 types of clothing with various capabilities, including: monitoring heart rate, electromyography, respiratory rate, steps, GPS, energy expenditure, posture, body temperature and identifying the activity. Conclusions. Many types of smart clothing from socks and gloves, to pants, shirts and bras are increasingly utilized to monitor sports activity worldwide and gather previously unavailable, yet highly valuable data. This provides a unique opportunity to study athletes during training and competition, potentially providing more effective training and better safety protocols.

Chest ultrasonography (CU) is a noninvasive imaging technique able to provide an immediate diagnosis of the underlying aetiology of acute respiratory failure and traumatic chest injuries. Given the great technologies, it is now possible to perform accurate CU in remote and adverse environments including the combat field, extreme sport settings, and environmental disasters, as well as during space missions. Today, the usage of CU in the extreme emergency setting is more likely to occur, as this technique proved to be a fast diagnostic tool to assist resuscitation manoeuvres and interventional procedures in many cases. A scientific literature review is presented here. This was based on a systematic search of published literature, on the following online databases: PubMed and Scopus. The following words were used: “chest sonography,” “ thoracic ultrasound,” and “lung sonography,” in different combinations with “extreme sport,” “extreme environment,” “wilderness,” “catastrophe,” and “extreme conditions.” This manuscript reports the most relevant usages of CU in the extreme setting as well as technological improvements and current limitations. CU application in the extreme setting is further encouraged here.

Many features allow modern sailing to take place alongside other extreme sports, and these in particular mean challenging the laws of nature, pushing technology to the limit, spectacularity, and the need for its participants to possess technical skills and competencies in addition to physical fitness. The various sailing classes greatly vary in the demands they place on athletes, putting sailing crews at risk of different types of injuries and illnesses. Both recreational and novice dinghy sailors report mainly acute injuries: that are, in particular, head contusions from hitting the boom and spinnaker pole, cuts and lacerations to the hands and knee contusions due to falls and collisions with equipment. At the other extreme, prevailing injuries among Olympic-class athletes tend to overuse injuries, in particular, to the back and knees, due to specific activities such as hikingand also to a poor balance between work and recovery time. In America’s Cup crews, grinders, mastmen, and bowmen are mainly prone to injuries, that are mainly muscle contractures, tendinopathies, and sprains to the upper limbs and back. Intense training, psychological stress, cold and damp also expose these sailors to upper respiratory tract infections. In offshore and oceanic yacht racing, a large rate of medical conditions consists ofillnesses, that mainly affect the urinary and gastrointestinal tract and the skin. Acute injuries may be favoured by severe fatigue and sleep loss, especially during solo races.

This chapter focuses on rehabilitation tactics specific to extreme sports participants and covers various aspects relative to the approach, type of exercises, and progression of the rehabilitative process.

Objectives Powered paragliding (PPG) and paragliding are two totally different sports, mainly because of the use of an engine in powered paragliding. As a consequence, the pattern of injuries caused by each of these two sports may be different. Setting To test this hypothesis, we analysed 384 incident reports gathered by the US Powered Paragliding Association from 1995 to 2012. The majority of the incidents occurred in the USA, while 26 incidents occurred elsewhere: Canada (8), Mexico (5), Panama (1), China (1), Japan (1), Malaysia (1), Indonesia (Java) (1), Europe (8): of which Spain (1), Belgium (1), UK (3), Italy (1), Romania (1), unknown (1). Outcome To identify the most affected body area and the most common type of injury sustained in PPG, and to highlight any differences from paragliding. Results The most affected body areas in PPG were the upper limbs (44.5%), followed by the lower limbs (32%), the back (9.8%), the head (7%), the pelvis (3.1), the chest (2.7%) and the abdomen (0.7%) (p

Paramotoring is a sport clearly distinct from paragliding in which the pilot flies using a special wing and wearing a motor on his back to take off. Generally paramotoring is not considered a high risk sport but since it is a relatively new sport, there aren't any reports in literature about injuries associated with its practice. We report the case of a 48 year old healthy professional athlete which had an accident during takeoff in one of his training flights and received diffuse axonal injury, vertebral fractures and anterior shoulder sprain with associated humeral trochiter fracture. We compared injuries to those connected to the practice of other aerial sports: paragliding in particular. Probably in paramotoring, unlike in paragliding, take-off is the more critical phase of flight and the use of the motor may aggravate the dynamics of trauma in case of accident. Although the patient was wearing a helmet at the time of the incident, he suffered a diffuse axonal injury: probably the impact location and impact speed compromised the effectiveness of helmet. So more research about the biomechanics of traumatic brain injuries in paramotoring is necessary to improve protection systems, such as helmets, to reduce injury risks in this sport. Furthermore padded back protection should be made obligatory when flying with power paragliding.