Activity

Organizational unit for performing a specific function.

Brain activity

Recreation refers to all those activities that people choose to do to refresh their bodies and minds and make their leisure time more interesting and enjoyable. Examples of recreation activities are walking, swimming, meditation, reading, playing games and dancing.

Cervical spine injuries resulting from recreational activity in shallow ocean water amid high-energy breaking waves.

Methods: Single-center 10-year review of patients who sustained cervical injuries at the beach in Long Island, New York, USA. A systematic review following the PRISMA guidelines was also performed.

Results: Nineteen patients (age 17-79 years) sustained cervical injury from high-energy breaking waves while in shallow beach water. Six patients dived into a wave; 6 patients were struck by a large wave while standing upright; and 7 tumbled in the waves while engaged in nonspecified recreational activity. All 7 patients with subaxial cervical AO Spine Injury Score (AO-SIS) >10 had cervical spine injury with cord signal change and required operative management. Diving mechanism, AO-SIS >10, and cord signal change all predicted significant disability or death at 12 months (P < 0.01). The present study and 7 additional studies reporting on 534 patients (mean age, 45.4 years) were analyzed. Within the reported literature, most patients (94.2%) sustained a spinal cord injury. On long-term follow-up, an estimated 64.8% of patients had permanent neurologic injury and 12.5% had permanent quadriplegia.

Conclusions: We offer the first description of cervical injuries sustained in water-related recreational activity using the AO-SIS. The morphology of injuries varied significantly and seemed to depend on body position and wave kinetic energy. Patients presenting with cervical injury in this setting and yielding AO-SIS >10 are likely to have poor functional recovery ¹⁾.