Epidemiology of injury in a male collegiate volleyball team in Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine epidemiology of injury in a male collegiate volleyball team in Japan during 2019 season. Thirty-six collegiate male volleyball players were followed during 2019 season. Injuries that required more than 24 hours to recover were classified as Time Loss (TL) injury, and those that required less than 24 hours were classified as Non-Time Loss (NTL) injury. Exposure was calculated by total number of players and hours of participation. Then, we computed injury rate per 1000 Player Hour (PH) and 1000 Athlete Exposure (AE) as outcome measures. A chi-square test was utilized to statistically compare. Eighteen injuries occurred and the overall injury rate was 1.28/1000PH and 2.05/1000AE, respectively. Of which, 11 cases were NTL injuries (0.78/1000PH, 1.26/1000AE) and 7 cases were TL injuries (0.50/1000PH, 0.80/1000AE). Within the 7 TL injuries, 5 (0.36/1000PH, 0.57/1000AE) were of minor severity. Most TL injury were classified as chronic in nature (n=5, 0.36/1000PH, 0.57/1000AE). There was no statistically significant difference between injury rate of match (n=2, 1.33/1000PH, 2.88/1000AE) and training (n=16, 1.27/1000PH, 1.98/1000AE). The most frequently injured body part in training was lower back (n=7, 0.56/1000PH, 0.87/1000AE). In match, highest injury rate was observed in ankle (n=2, 1.33/1000PH, 2.88/1000AE). In conclusion, our results showed relatively low injury rate, and majority of reported injuries were categorized as minor severity. Our study also demonstrated injury characteristics of Japanese male collegiate players that lower back injuries were prevalent in training, and acute ankle injury rate was highest in match.