Internal carotid artery dissection and stroke associated with wakeboarding.

Wakeboarding is a popular water sport but has significant potential for trauma due to the high velocities, rotational maneuvers, acceleratory forces, water obstacles, and general lack of protective equipment used. Head or neck trauma is a concern, which may be even more common with wakeboarding than other water sports, but the true trauma incidence is unknown and probably underreported. While traumatic brain injury has been reported to occur during wakeboarding we present an unusual mechanism of central nervous system injury in which a young adult male developed a carotid artery dissection and stroke shortly following a wakeboarding accident.