Information about a piece of news titled Injury surveillance underestimates the incidence of time-loss injuries in football
Injury surveillance underestimates the incidence of time-loss injuries in football
Intoduction
Prospective injury surveillance by team medical staff in Norwegian male professional football underestimates the incidence of time-loss injuries by at least one-fifth.
Since the 2000 season, an injury surveillance system has been established to monitor injury risk and injury patterns in the Norwegian professional football league.
The aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of routine injury registration performed by medical staff in professional football. The team medical staff completed injury registration forms on a monthly basis throughout the 2007 season (January-October).
Players were interviewed at the end of the season (October/November 07) about all injuries that occurred from July through September. Of the 14 teams in the 1st league, 296 of 310 A-squad players from 13 teams were interviewed. An injury was recorded when a player was unable to take fully part in football training or match the day after injury.
A total of 174 injuries were registered: 123 acute injuries and 51 overuse injuries. Of these, 141 were reported by medical staff and 122 by players. A total of 89 injuries (51%) were registered by both methods, 52 injuries (30%) by medical staff only and 33 injuries (19%) by player interviews only.
Prospective injury surveillance by team medical staff in Norwegian male professional football underestimates the incidence of time-loss injuries by at least one-fifth.
The authors of this study are John Bjørneboe, Tonje Flørenes, Roald Bahr and Thor Einar Andersen.
Read the paper in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine in Science and Sport.