Epidemiology of injuries in elite male and female futsal: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Epidemiology of injuries in elite male and female futsal: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Science and Medicine in Football, 5 (1). pp. 59-71.

Response to Comment On: “Injury Profile in Women’s Football: A Systematic Review and Meta‑Analysis”

“…We agree with Mayhew et al [1] on the fact that the degree of heterogeneity of our pooled injury incidences were very high. High I 2 scores have also been documented in most of the previously published meta-analyses on the epidemiology of injury in different sports [10][11][12]17]. Although we are aware that the high heterogeneity is currently an inherent limitation in the epidemiology of sport-related injury, we strongly think that the findings from these meta-analyses can help practitioners to better understand the injury profile of the sports explored.…”

“…First, we would like to remind the reader that the main purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of epidemiological data of injuries in women's football; thus, all the conclusions of this study are based on the rigorous methodology used. In order to contextualize the results found in this study (similar to that which has been conducted in previous meta-analyses [10][11][12][13]), in the Discussion section some 'indirect comparisons' were carried out between the results of our study for female soccer players and the findings reported mainly in a meta-analysis on the epidemiology of injuries in professional soccer players in which a very similar methodology was applied.…”

A Field-Based Approach to Determine Soft Tissue Injury Risk in Elite Futsal Using Novel Machine Learning Techniques

“…A convenience sample of 139 [72 (age: 22.5 ± 5.2 years, stature: 1.75 ± 0.7 m, body mass: 72.9 ± 6.9 kg) males and 67 (age: 22.4 ± 5.5 years, stature: 1.64 ± 0.5 m, body mass: 59.4 ± 5.1 kg) females] elite futsal players from 12 different teams [56 players (24 males and 32 females) from six club engaged in the First (top) National Spanish Futsal division and 83 players (48 males and 35 females) from six clubs engaged in the Second National Futsal division] completed this study. Elite futsal players were selected in this study because a recent published meta-analysis on injury epidemiology reported that this sport present high incidence rates of injuries (5.3 injuries per 1,000 hours of players exposure) (Ruiz-Pérez et al, 2020) and hence, urgent preventive measures are needed.…”

“…Lower extremity non-contact soft tissue (muscle, tendon, and ligament) (LE-ST) injuries are very common events in intermittent team sports such as soccer (López-Valenciano et al, 2019), futsal (Ruiz-Pérez et al, 2020), rugby (Williams et al, 2013), bat (i.e., cricket and softball) and stick (i.e., field hockey and lacrosse) sports (Panagodage Perera et al, 2018). It has been suggested that most of these LE-ST injuries occur when the resilience of soft tissue to injury is not enough to enable athletes to tolerate the loading patterns produced during the execution of high intensity dynamic tasks (e.g., cutting, sprinting, and landing) (Kalkhoven et al, 2020).…”

Injury rates following the COVID-19 lockdown: A case study from an UEFA futsal champions league finalist

“…Futsal is a high-intensity intermittent team-sport, in which players are exposed to high metabolic and neuromechanical stress during match-play. 5 Regarding injury characteristics, a recent meta-analysis 6 found that male players displayed: 1) an overall injury incidence rate of 6.8 injuries/1000-h and; 2) an incidence rate of 44.9 injuries/1000-h during match-play. Likewise, it was found that professional players from the 1 st and 2 nd LNFS sustained ∼10 injuries/1000-h of training and ∼60 injuries/1000-h of competition during the pre-season and that most injuries affected the lower-limbs (i.e., 92.1%).…”