Skiing Injuries - How to stay safe on your winter holiday

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Best of Live Well ft. Lance Alexander.

Lance Alexander (0:05)

Good morning, Singapore. With the year-end holidays approaching, Singaporeans could be planning winter getaways to destinations like Japan, South Korea, Switzerland or France.

And for some, that means hitting the ski slopes. But how safe is skiing, especially for Singaporeans who aren't used to winter sports?

A 2026 international review of skiing and snowboarding injuries found an average of about four injuries for every 1,000 days of recreational skiing. Knee injuries were among the worst, with falls a leading cause of injury. Here in Singapore, specialists at Oxford Orthopaedics say they have been seeing patients returning from ski holidays with knee, shoulder, and ankle injuries. Is there something we can do to mitigate, to reduce the risk of injury? Dr. Lester Tan joins us. He is a Senior Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Oxford Orthopaedics. Dr. Tan, welcome to the show.

Lester Tan Teong Jin (1:13)

Good morning, Lance. Thank you for having me.

Lance Alexander (1:14)

My pleasure. I mentioned knee, shoulder, and ankle injuries. Are these the most common skiing injuries you're seeing when Singaporeans return from overseas after having a grand old time on the slopes?

Lester Tan Teong Jin (1:32)

That's a great question. So it really depends. Actually, broadly, we divide it into skiers and snowboarders. And the tendency is for skiers to injure their knees and the snowboarders to injure their upper limbs. This is probably to do with the mechanics of everything. With skis, you have two long skis, one on each foot, which move independently of the other. The ski acts as a very long lever arm. If the ski, the front end or the back end gets caught and the foot goes into an awkward twisting motion, there's a very long lever arm and a very big twisting motion going through the knee.

Ankle injuries, we have seen a reduction over the years because of the change in equipment. The ankle boots are now very secure. The ankle doesn't twist as much, but the force transmits a lot through the knee. And commonly, the most common one would be the tear of the anterior cruciate ligament, the ACL, or the ligament on the inside of the knee, called the medial collateral ligament, the MCL.

For the snowboarders, both their feet are planted on the same device. So there is no great twisting motion, twisting both knees together, so they don't get, they don't tend to get lower limb injuries. They tend to get more in terms of falling forward, landing on their wrists, and they get wrist fractures, or even shoulder dislocations, or fractures of the collarbone, or what we call the clavicle.

Lance Alexander (2:52)

Yeah, it sounds like some of these injuries can be pretty serious.

Lester Tan Teong Jin (2:56)

Yeah, so we, generally we see them when they come back from their overseas holidays, because we don't have any skiing facilities in Singapore. Some of them come back in cars, some of them with some form of a knee brace, and with, depending on where they get injured, some have very little scans or investigations done prior, and then we have to slowly work out for them, and decide what's next in their treatment plan for them.

Lance Alexander (3:21)

Okay, when it comes to surgery as well, are you seeing more of them also needing surgery?

Lester Tan Teong Jin (3:27)

So surgery really depends on two factors. One would be the injury factors, how unstable, how bad is the injury, and two is the patient factors. Some patients have very active, demanding lifestyles, and they say that, oh, I need to go back to being very mobile. I am keen to return to sports. And then these are the conversations that we have in terms of returning to sports through surgery.

Those with minor injuries or tend to want to be more sedentary, a little bit elderly. If I tire my ACL, maybe I do not want to go for surgery because my lifestyle does not require it. So it's a very individualized approach with regards to each patient and their injury patterns.

Lance Alexander (4:05)

Okay, maybe you can tell us, Dr. Tan, does your fitness and age also play a factor?

Lester Tan Teong Jin (4:10)

I think age is sensitive nowadays because age is just a number. You can see it out in the streets nowadays. People who we think are supposedly old are really fit and really well and taking very good care of themselves. I think generally Singaporeans now before the haze, we see a lot of people running, hitting the gyms. Then we have the strong silver generation. So we no longer look at age as a number, but how well they are taking care of themselves in terms of their overall fitness and their other comorbidities.