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Final Program


Final Program

1226 - Comprehensive Systematic Review of Spinal Cord Injuries in Equestrian Athletes: Incidence, Risk Factors, and Outcomes

Thursday, February 27, 2025
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM MST
Objectives: The goal of this systematic review is to identify common themes amongst acute spinal cord injuries (SCI) in equestrian athletes. Over 27 million individuals ride horses and SCIs are one of the most severe forms of injury with life-altering outcomes.  

Design: A qualitative systematic review was performed using PubMed, CINAHL Plus with Full Text (EBSCO), Cochrane Library, and Scopus with pre-determined MESH terms. The initial search returned 354 studies. Following PRISMA guidelines, 13 articles were included in the final study. Exclusion criteria included injuries to the horse instead of the rider, non-English language, cauda equina, and case reports. Data extraction was completed, and common findings were evaluated narratively due to heterogeneity of data. 

Results: Articles included in the final analysis ranged from 1993 to 2021. Seven manuscripts listed specific horse-related activities that caused SCI, with fall from horse as the highest precent of injury. Nine articles identified the injury region, with large variations and no clear dominant area of injury. Five articles identified the length of hospital stay, ranging 1 to 82 days. Four articles looked at the association of professional vs non-professional riders, with three of the articles identifying a higher risk of SCI in non-professional riders. Only two articles evaluated use of helmet at time of injury, with one article showing 81% of those with SCI used helmets, and the other showing only 35.6% utilized this safety measure.  

Conclusions: SCI in equestrian athletes can have a wide presentation, with large variation on location of injury and length of stay. However, non-professional riders are at a greater risk of SCI and individuals are more likely to sustain injury from a fall from a horse rather than a kick or another modality of injury. More work can be done to elicit presenting symptoms, types of surgical intervention used, and long-term outcome and recovery.