Abstract

Wakeboarding is a common water sport which may cause serious injuries. Especially joints are affected like anterior cruciate ligament tears, shoulder dislocations or sprained ankles and have frequently been described. In contrast, because of the largeness, length and strength of the femur, femoral shaft fractures are mainly caused by high-energy trauma in young people¹ in an ordinary population.

Among athletic population numerous studies evaluated stress fractures of the femur. According to their results this type of injury is relatively uncommon, and data from the literature suggest that they constitute only 2.8–7% of all sport related stress fractures.² There are only few data about high-energy trauma of the femoral shaft in sport although the incidence of acute femoral fractures is quite high in certain sports' like motocross (10%),³ and alpine skiing among inpatient athletes.

Despite multiple reports in various sports of stress fracture of the femur and few publications of direct trauma, to our knowledge there is only one retrospective epidemiological study in wakeboarding, which reports femur fractures without differentiating between vehicle towed and cable wakeboarding. Our purpose is to illustrate two cases of high-energy related femoral shaft fractures in a male recreational cable wakeboarder and to review the pertinent literature.