Craze toll

Press, 22 June 1984, Page 6

Craze toll

NZPA-AP Chicago Break-dancing, the craze of making breath-taking spins, jumps, and splits to the pounding beat of rock music, has left one man a quadriplegic and sent at least nine others in Chicago to hospitals with less serious injuries.

Efrain Arreola, aged 25, an accountant from Mexico City, broke his neck while trying to imitate breakdancers performing on the street near Chicago’s lakefront on June 10. Mr Arreola had undergone surgery to remove bone fragments from his spine after shattering his fifth vertebra while doing a headspin, a spokeswoman at St Mary of Nazareth Hospital said. He was reported to be in good condition in the intensive care ward.

Earlier in the day doctors had placed him in a halo, a specially designed brace which helps stabilise and support the neck and spine, the spokeswoman said.

Mr Arreola, while visiting Chicago, was watching break-dancers and decided to try it. But when he attempted a headspin he lost his balance and broke his neck. In the last six weeks, the okes'" - said, the ho r

spokeswoman saio, ie hospital had treated four teenagers for minor injuries suffered while break-dancing. Dr Herbert Schwartz, an orthopaedic surgeon at the University of Chicago Wyler Children’s Hospital, said that he had treated five break-dancers with fractured arms.

“The injuries themselves are not new, we’ve been treating those kinds of injuries for years,” he said. “The treatment is pretty straight-forward, only we haven’t seen the injuries before from dancing.”