Abstract

Recently leisure sports are gaining popularity. One of them is golf. Golf population is about seven millions in Japan, nowadays. It is very good to participate in sports to keep up with our physical fitness. But it must be based on our physical strength. If we would like to make a rapid progress in the golf or feel pleasant with longer shot using a woody head club, there willbe over burden and golfers rib fracture may regot. The head of golf club makes centrifugal force, and we turn rapidly our body to gain more powerful impact. If we play golf taking no account of our physical condition for longer time, for more than several days a week, these repeated stresses may be one ofthe cause of the golfers rib fracture. At time, golfer (average golfer) visitour clinic complaining of pain in the chest, back, shoulder and neck. Through examination of these patients and physical signs and their progresses, we think that the methods of training of golf are not appropriate. Then weinvestigated the causes, mechanism and the character of golfers rib fracture. In this paper we reported 12 cases of such fractures, we find, to my knowledge31 cases have been reported in Japan and only 3 cases in the world literature.But we do not think that this fracture is a rare one and many cases may be unnoticed to natural tendency toward rapid spontaneous healing. Verf.-Referat