Association Between Ball-Handling Versus Defending Actions and Acute Noncontact Lower Extremity Injuries in High School Basketball and Soccer. (April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Monfort, Scott M.; Comstock, R. Dawn; Collins, Christy L.; Onate, James A.; Best, Thomas M.; Chaudhari, Ajit M.W.
• Is Part Of: American journal of sports medicine. Volume 43:Number 4(2015:Apr.)
• Page Start: 802
• Page End: 807
• Publication Date: 2015-04
• Subjects: pediatric sports medicine -- injury prevention -- soccer; Sports medicine -- Periodicals; Sports injuries -- Periodicals; Orthopedic surgery -- Periodicals; 617.102705
• DOI: 10.1177/0363546514564541
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0363-5465

Abstract

Background: High school–sponsored athletic programs currently provide more than 7.7 million students in the United States with health and societal benefits, but they also inherently increase the risk of students sustaining a sports injury. Understanding risk factors that predict injuries in sports is an essential first step to addressing the problem in this population. Purpose: To determine the role of offensive versus defensive actions in noncontact lower extremity injury rates in high school basketball and soccer in both boys' and girls' sports. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study. Methods: Noncontact lower extremity injury data were collected from academic years 2005-2006 through 2011-2012 for boys' and girls' basketball and soccer through the surveillance tool High School RIO (reporting information online). The injuries in this subset of the database occurred over a total of 6.4 million athlete-exposures. Results: Significant differences in overall lower extremity injury rates were found when comparing ball-handling and defending actions in basketball (rate ratio [RR], 1.36; 95% CI, 1.08-1.73; P = .009), but no appreciable difference was observed in soccer (RR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.70-1.12; P = .31). Female participants had higher injury rates than did males for both ball-handling and defending actions for both sports ( P < .05). Only girls' soccer showed significant differences in the odds ratio (OR) of defending to ball-handling injury rates between competition and practice (OR, 1.88; 95% CI, 1.01-3.48; P = .047). Conclusion: The injury rate differences observed in this study between offensive and defensive actions suggest that investigating potential differences between sport-specific tasks may provide a more complete understanding of injury mechanisms.