Epidemiology of injuries in the Spanish national futsal male team: a five-season retrospective study

Abstract

BackgroundFutsal started being played in 1930 and the number of futsal players has increased all over the world ever since. Nonetheless, despite the fact that Spain is one of the most relevant national teams worldwide, information on the incidence of injuries and their anthropometric characteristics is sparse in this country.AimTo analyse medical assistance provided to players in their prematch concentration camps with the Spanish national team over five seasons, from 2010–2011 to 2014–2015, and also to collect data regarding anthropometric characteristics.Materials and methodsThis is a retrospective and detailed study of injuries players suffered over these five seasons. All variables were registered on an Excel spreadsheet and later analysed statistically.Results411 injuries were studied in total. The dominant somatotype was mesomorph and the injured pivots were both the most endomorphic and the most mesomorphic. The most injured body structure was the hamstring muscles, occurring due to training and intrinsic mechanisms, where fatigue was the most frequent diagnosis. Only a few complementary examinations were carried out and prematch withdrawal was rare.DiscussionThe skinfold test total sum was lower than that of the Spanish 11-a-side players or than that in the lower category futsal Spanish players. In various research studies analysing exclusively injuries occurring in matches, the most frequent injury is ligament injury by extrinsic mechanism. The body mass index was not a useful parameter when assessing players’ appropriate weight. Most injuries occurred in training sessions, mostly by intrinsic mechanism; the highest percentage of traumatic injuries occurred in official matches.

The Relationship of Age and BMI with Physical Fitness in Futsal Players

“…An assessment method to monitor body mass status was body mass index (BMI), which has been used to categorize humans as underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese for health purposes. BMI was included in several physical fitness batteries administered to futsal players [3,4,10,11]. Nevertheless, the relationship of BMI with other physical fitness components has not been examined in futsal so far.…”

Isokinetic Assessment of Muscular Strength and Balance in Brazilian Elite Futsal Players

“…14 In futsal, prospective studies with hamstring injury rates are scarce, but Junge and Dvorak 10 demonstrated that thigh strain is among the most prevalent diagnoses of time-loss injuries in futsal players. In addition, recently Martinez-Rianza et al 15 analyzed medical assistance to Spanish national futsal team over five seasons and showed that in 43.3% of the cases, injuries were sustained in the thigh, followed by the leg (12.6%) and knee (10%). Most assistance cases (52.6%) were due to muscle overload (i.e., when the individual did not have an anatomical injury but the muscle was painful and slightly tight when manually explored) and 14.4% were due to residual pain.…”

Epidemiology of Injuries in Elite Female Futsal Players: A Prospective Cohort Study

“…Contact injuries were more frequent during matches than training, but similar to previous research in futsal [3,8,9] and soccer [24] only 25.6 % of all injuries were suffered by contact mechanisms. However, other studies reported higher values for contact injuries on female [1,2] and male [20] futsal teams. One explanation for the dissimilarity might be the regional differences in injury incidence observed in studies of other team sports or the different medical support according to the level of the teams.…”

“…Data were then categorized and codified to be analyzed with SPSS for Windows (20.0, Chicago, IL, USA), considering a significance level at p < 0.05. Qualitative variables were exposed by absolute frequency and percentages [20]. The overall injury incidence, match injury incidence and training injury incidence were the number of injuries divided by 1000 player-hours in total, match and training, respectively, including also 95 % confidence intervals (CI) following previous research about injury risk statistical approaches [18].…”

“…The main strength of our study is the prospective monitoring of injuries over the course of one season with a protocolized system reviewed by technical staffs on several teams with elite female futsal players. Previous research on futsal were conducted retrospectively [2,7] and focused on small periods or tournaments, or only in male players [20], or with amateur (i. e. non-professional) leagues [1,3], or with only one team [9].…”