Annals of plastic surgery
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Annals of plastic surgery · Dec 2008
Snowblower injuries to the hand: epidemiology, patterns of injury, and strategies for prevention.
Snowblowers injure approximately 5000 people a year and can cause devastating hand injuries. Even with added safety measures and warnings on modern snowblowers, hand injuries are still occurring at an alarming rate. We have reviewed our series of snowblower-related hand injuries to elucidate the epidemiology, patterns of injury, and strategies for prevention. ⋯ Operator inexperience, low operator intelligence, and excessive alcohol consumption do not seem to contribute to injury. Instead, significant experience, older machines, short durations of use before injury, characteristic weather patterns, and underlying misperceptions about snowblower design and function typically set the stage for injury. Injuries may be prevented in the future by improving snowblower design and/or by making brief public service announcements.