Retrospective study of Parajump injuries in Indian Armed Forces

Abstract

Introduction: A number of studies on military and civil parachuting injuries have been published in the past. Most of the studies place the incidence of parachuting injuries to vary between 0.22% and 0.89%. The profile of injuries sustained during jumps by Indian paratroopers from Paratrooper Training School (PTS), Agra, between 2013 and 2019 was analyzed. Material and Methods: A retrospective analysis of Indian military parachuting injuries was done to assess injury patterns from the records of static line and combat free fall jumps, available at the PTS. The data pertaining to 270 injuries sustained from 256 jumps were analyzed in terms of number of jumps by each paratrooper, type of course/ mission, age, time of the of jump (day/ night), type of parachute used, wind speed at the time of drop, terrain on which the paratrooper landed, the location / part of body injured, the diagnosis, and finally the possible modality of injury using descriptive statistics. Results: The incidence of injuries ascertained from the records varied from 0.054% to 0.10% with a mean incidence of 0.083% from 306,986 jumps recorded over 7 years. Most injuries were related to refresher jumps and static line jumps. There were three fatalities recorded in this period, all due to failure of main and standby parachutes. Most of the injuries were sustained at the time of landing (218, 86.17%). Lower limb injuries accounted for maximum injuries (109, 40.37%), followed by truncal injuries 95 (35.19%) and upper limb injuries 33 (12.22%). Conclusion: The study brings out an interesting aspect of significantly less military parachuting injuries seen in the present study vis-à-vis reported in literature. A high degree of physical fitness and rigorous training are probably responsible for this low incidence. Increasing the duration of refresher training and physical conditioning may further reduce the occurrence of injuries. A cost-efficacy analysis of the same may be done before effecting changes in the training programme.