Incidence and nature of sports injuries in Ireland

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to investigate the incidence of sports injuries in Ireland and to analyze various ways of quantifying the seriousness of these injuries. A 12-month, prospective study was carried out on 324 Irish athletes involved at a high level of sports participation in one of the following categories: endur ance, contact, noncontact, or explosive sports. Results were expressed in four ways: 1) number of injuries per year; 2) days injured per year; 3) number of injuries per 10,000 hours of participation; and 4) duration of injury per 1000 hours of participation. The average athlete sustained 1.17 acute and 0.93 overuse injuries per year and suffered the effects of sports injury for 52 days. More time was lost through overuse injuries than acute injuries. The incidence of acute injuries per 10,000 hours of participation was lowest in the noncontact sports and highest in the contact sports, but there was no difference in the incidence of overuse injuries between any of the four categories of sport. The injury rate per 10,000 hours of participation was lowest in noncontact and explosive sports and highest in contact sports. However, when expressed in terms of days lost per 1000 hours of participation, endurance sports had the lowest inci dence of time loss and explosive sports the highest.