Exploring Caving Accidents, Deaths, & Rescues In The US

[Cheryl Jones]

Exploring Caving Accidents, Deaths, And Rescues In The United States
Outside
Thursday, September 13, 2012

"......The incident had at least two major effects in the world of caving. The first was local. Officials closed Nutty Putty Cave to future expeditions. The second began at the University of Virginia Medical School. Doctors looking for numbers on caving deaths and accidents found little in the way of scientific studies, so they decided to write their own paper. “That had us all thinking about caving safety,” says study co-author Dr. Nathan Charlton. “There is very little hard data out there regarding the epidemiology of injuries and fatalities in caves. We thought it would be important information for our area as there are a lot of caves in the region.”

Charlton and colleagues gathered the National Speleological Society’s annual American Caving Accidents publications from 1980 to 2008 and started going through them. The numbers were not definitive, as the organization relies on rescue groups, law enforcement, and local grottoes to file volunteer reports. The numbers did represent the best dataset available, and Charlton and his team analyzed them. The resulting study, “The Epidemiology of Caving Accidents in the United States,” was published in the September issue of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. It is the most comprehensive look at caving deaths, injuries, and rescues to date. Here is what Fletcher and his colleagues found, by the numbers."

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http://www.outsideonline.com/blog/outdo ... ?169663286

[wyandottecaver]

wow, ACA does essentially that kind of analysis each year so they just added some numbers, and published a paper using ACA data and analysis as a source? kinda lame, since as Doctors they presumably could have tried getting data from injuries treated at Hospitals....now THAT would be a useful dataset.