Surveillance of Injury Types, Locations, and Intensities in Male and Female Tennis Players: A Content Analysis of Online Newspaper Reports

Abstract

The popularity of modern tennis has contributed to the increasing number of participants at both recreational and competitive levels. The influx of numerous tennis participants has resulted in a wave of injury occurrences of different types and magnitudes across both male and female players. Since tennis injury harms both players’ economic and career development, a better understanding of its epidemiology could potentially curtail its prevalence and occurrences. We used online-based tennis-related injury reports to study the prevalence, location types, and injury intensities in both male and female tennis players for the past five years. It is demonstrated from the chi-square analysis that injury occurrences are significantly associated with a specific gender (χ2(18) = 50.773; p = 0.001), with male players having a higher risk of injury manifestation (68.10%) as compared with female players (31.90%). Nonetheless, knee, hip, ankle, and shoulder injuries are highly prevalent in both male and female players. Moreover, the injury intensities are distributed across gender (χ2(2) = 0.398; p = 0.820), with major injuries being dominant, followed by minor injuries, whilst a few cases of career-threatening injuries were also reported. It was similarly observed that male players recorded a higher degree of both major, minor, and career-threatening injuries than female players. In addition, male players sustained more elbow, hip, knee, shoulder, and thigh injuries than female players. Whereas, female players mostly suffered from Achilles and back injuries, ankle and hamstring injuries affected both genders. The usage of online newspaper reports is pivotal in characterizing the epidemiology of tennis-related injuries based on locations and gender to better understand the pattern and localization of injuries, which could be used to address the problem of modern tennis-related injuries.