Eight-season epidemiological study of match injuries in women’s international rugby sevens

Abstract

This study aimed to describe anthropometry and incidence, nature and causes of match injuries in women's international rugby sevens and to compare these with results reported previously for men's international rugby sevens. The study comprised an 8-season, prospective study of World Rugby's women's Sevens World Series. Over the eight seasons, the overall incidence of injury was 105.6 (95% CI: 96.0 to 116.3) injuries/1000 player-match-hours with a mean injury severity of 53.4 (95% CI: 46.9 to 59.9) days-absence. There were no statistically significant trends for backs or forwards in the incidence (backs: p = 0.470; forwards: p = 0.242) or mean severity (backs: p = 0.098; forwards: p = 0.544) of injuries sustained over the 8-season period. Head/face (20.8%), knee (19.7%), ankle (11.3%) and shoulder/clavicle (8.4%) were the most common injury locations while ligament sprain (31.7%), concussion (15.6%), haematoma/bruise (11.5%) and fracture (11.5%) were the most common types of injury sustained. Being-tackled (35.4%), tackling (26.3%), collisions (13.8%) and rucks (8.8%) were the match events responsible for most injuries. The study indicates that injury burden in women's international rugby sevens (5,640 days-absence/1000 player-match-hours; 95% CI: 5,123 to 6,209) is similar to that reported previously for men's international rugby sevens (5,263 days-absence/1000 player-match-hours; 95% CI: 5,000 to 5,540).

The Incidence, Cost, and Burden of Concussion in Women’s Rugby League and Rugby Union: A Systematic Review and Pooled Analysis

“…All the studies included in this review were considered to be of moderate quality [51]. More than half of the studies (62.6%) utilised either an all-inclusive [10,[13][14][15]68] or fully-inclusive [11,66,67,70,71] injury definition. Upon pooling the data, the all-inclusive injury definition resulted in a concussion incidence of 1.0 (95% CI 0.7-1.4) per 1000 match hours for rugby 15 s, whereas the fully-inclusive injury definition resulted in a concussion incidence of 3.6 (95% CI 1.4-9.7) per 1000 match hours.…”

“…Sixteen studies [ 10 , 11 , 13 – 16 , 19 , 66 – 74 ] met the inclusion criteria for this review (see Fig. 1 ).…”

“…1 ). Nine of the included studies [ 10 , 11 , 13 – 16 , 70 , 73 , 74 ] reported on women’s rugby 15 s match injuries, four studies [ 66 – 68 , 72 ] reported on women’s rugby 7 s, two studies [ 19 , 69 ] reported on women’s rugby league, and two studies [ 14 , 71 ] reported on women’s rugby 15 s training injuries. Although included in the review, some studies were excluded from the pooled analysis.…”

“…Only four studies [ 11 , 66 – 68 ] reported player position for concussion (see Table 2 ). Although backs recorded more concussions than forwards in women’s World Cup (RR 0.9, 95% CI 0.1–6.2; p = 0.8927) and rugby 7 s (RR 1.0, 95% CI 0.7–1.5; p = 0.9279), these differences were not significant.…”

“…Injury definition and exposure heterogeneity can limit interstudy comparability, and this was evident with three studies not reporting exposure rates and three studies reporting a different exposure rate (AE). Although more than half of the included studies [ 10 , 11 , 13 – 15 , 66 – 68 , 70 , 71 ] utilised an inclusive-type injury definition, this was evenly split, with five studies reporting an all-inclusive [ 10 , 13 – 15 , 68 ] injury definition and five studies reporting a fully-inclusive [ 11 , 66 , 67 , 70 , 71 ] injury definition. The use of these definitions is similar; however the fully-inclusive definition reports on missed match and training time and excludes injuries that require assistance from medical personnel [ 57 , 60 ].…”