I was on another forum and lots of people seemed to know someone who either died or was paralyzed from a diving accident, usually from diving into shallow water or hitting a rock on a dive.
So how often does this happen? the only cite I could find was this and its from Turkey.
Are you talking about Scuba diving or just diving into a swimming pool or lake from the pool deck or shore?
It does happen. I know one. He went to the pool with some friends to celebrate graduating high school, some alcohol was involved, he hit his head on something and has been a quadriplegic since. He went on to college and is now a math teacher at his alma mater, although he needs an assistant.
How often? IIRC there have been other cases over the years.
Charles Krauthammer the columnist was paralyzed from waist down in a dive while he was a medical student , he died last year from cancer.
We have a local woman who was paralyzed from a fall into a pool at party.
The latter.
The fact that so many people personally know someone this has happened to makes me think it is much more common than I expected.
since Charles Krauthammer was a medical student he said he knew right away what had happened to him. He went on to finish medical school and was a psychiatrist before becoming a political columnist.
Remember gospel singer and one-time best-selling Christian author Joni Eareckson Tada? That’s how she became paralyzed. Incredibly, she’s lived this way since the summer of 1967; however, she’s had breast cancer and it looks like she’s recently had a recurrence.
There used to be a water park in my town that had a wave pool, and some years back (probably 20 or so), a 40-ish woman was bumped off her air mattress at the wrong time, hit her head on the bottom, and was paralyzed until she died about 10 years later. The story behind THAT was quite tragic, because she had recently been widowed, with several teenage children, and a friend had given them tickets to the water park to cheer them up. The mother’s death was from her oxygen catching fire while she was smoking. :eek:
Here in the upper Midwest, the quadriplegics are more likely to come from ATV accidents than pretty much everything else put together. (ETA organ donors too)
I’m not finding the number you want, but here are a few that you might be able to extrapolate from:
Diving is the #4 cause of spinal cord injury for men and #5 for women.
Over 17 years (1990-2006), there were 111,341 emergency room visits in the U.S. for diving injuries to people 19 and younger. 38.2% were injuries to the head or neck. Lacerations and soft tissue injuries were 57.2% of the injuries, so spinal injuries had to be less than that.
Here are some better numbers (PDF). In the 26 years from 1973-1998, there were 1,443 spinal cord injuries in the U.S. from diving, or about 55/year.
That number seems kind of low. I did find this.
However diving injuries are something like the 4th most common cause of spinal injuries. Behind auto accidents, falls & gunshots.
My number seemed really low to me too. Looking at that report more closely, they first say 11K SCI injuries per year but then the table show numbers based on 1/10 that. And I think there were looking at polls only.
Or maybe there’s just a lot more “hold my beer” guys in 2014 than the '90s.
as a kid I was taught put your arms in front of you when diving, that way your head does not hit the bottom of the pool/lake/etc first. I assume they still teach that but not everybody takes a swim lesson .