Snowboarders who use wrist guards to prevent hand injuries may unwittingly increase their risk of injuring their elbow, upper arm or shoulder, new study findings, reported by researchers in Canada, show.

“The results were consistent in showing that wrist guards were protective for hand-forearm injuries but possibly harmful for elbow-shoulder injuries,” Dr. Brent Hagel, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and colleagues write in American Journal of Epidemiology.

They investigated the effect of wrist guards on injuries to the upper extremity - including the forearm, upper arm, wrist, shoulder, hand and elbow - in a study of 1,066 snowboarders who reported such injuries to the ski patrol during the 2001-2002 ski season. For comparison, the study also included 970 snowboarders who did not experience injuries to their upper extremity.

Fractures were the most commonly reported injury to the upper extremity. Seventy-nine percent of injuries to the forearm were fractures, as were 47 percent of upper arm injuries and 47 percent of wrist injuries. Half of the hand injuries were sprains, however, as were 45 percent of injuries to the wrist and nearly 24 percent of elbow injuries. Other less common injuries included bruises and shoulder, elbow and hand dislocations.

Altogether, the use of wrist guards was associated with an 85 percent reduced risk of injury to the hand, wrist or forearm, the investigators report.

But a “disturbing finding,” although not statistically significant, was that wrist guard use was also associated with a more than two-fold increased risk of injury to the elbow, upper arm or shoulder, Hagel and colleagues note.

Commenting on the study, Dr. William O. Roberts, of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, told that despite the increased risk of injury to some regions of the body, “it is probably still worth wearing wrist guards.”

Still, “you shouldn’t increase the risk of what you’re doing because you’re wearing wrist guards,” he added, explaining that the higher and the farther snowboarders attempt to jump, the more they increase their risk of injury.

As indicated by Hagel’s findings, a wrist guard “protects your wrist, but it doesn’t protect your elbow and shoulder,” said Roberts, the immediate past president of the Indianapolis, Indiana-based American College of Sports Medicine.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, July 15, 2005.