Football-specific extension of the IOC consensus statement: methods for recording and reporting of epidemiological data on injury and illness in sport 2020

Abstract

Several sports have published consensus statements on methods and reporting of epidemiological studies concerning injuries and illnesses with football (soccer) producing one of the first guidelines. This football-specific consensus statement was published in 2006 and required an update to align with scientific developments in the field. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently released a sports-generic consensus statement outlining methods for recording and reporting epidemiological data on injury and illness in sport and encouraged the development of sport-specific extensions.The Fédération Internationale de Football Association Medical Scientific Advisory Board established a panel of 16 football medicine and/or science experts, two players and one coach. With a foundation in the IOC consensus statement, the panel performed literature reviews on each included subtopic and performed two rounds of voting prior to and during a 2-day consensus meeting. The panel agreed on 40 of 75 pre-meeting and 21 of 44 meeting voting statements, respectively. The methodology and definitions presented in this comprehensive football-specific extension should ensure more consistent study designs, data collection procedures and use of nomenclature in future epidemiological studies of football injuries and illnesses regardless of setting. It should facilitate comparisons across studies and pooling of data.

Video analysis of heading and risk of head injury situations in elite international men's football: Does the frequency of headers increase with the level of play?

“…The hypothesis of the study was that the frequency of headers decreased with increasing level of play, and the amount of head injuries depended on the heading numbers. Since there is no consequent definition of “elite” in the existing literature, the UEFA Club Coefficient was used to classify the cohort group (Waldén et al., 2023). The teams that were observed in our study were at the top of this ranking during the observed period (Union des Associations Europénnes de Football).…”

Groin injuries in women's premier league football in Norway: A two‐season prospective cohort study describing clinical and imaging characteristics

“…The Norwegian women's premier league, Toppserien (UEFA club coefficient ranking in 2020 and 2021: 12th) consists of 10 teams. Resources vary between teams, but most have a combination of professional and amateur players as defined by Walden et al 10 . Around 20% of the players have a full‐time professional contract, 60% have minimum salary contracts (from 390 euros/month) and 20% are amateurs.…”

“…In the ReadyToPlay project, we followed the definition of a health problem and injury from the consensus statements available on recording and reporting of epidemiological data on injury in sports 9 and football 10 . Groin injuries were further defined as injuries reported in the body areas: anterior pelvis or anterior hip/groin 10 .…”

“…Time loss was also reported in the following categories: 0, 1-3, 4-7, 8-28, 29-90, 91-180, and >180 days. 10 Only groin injuries that occurred after players inclusion were included in the incidence and burden analyses. Overall incidence was reported as the number of groin injuries that occurred per 1000 h of football exposure.…”

Are Football Players More Prone to Muscle Injury after COVID-19 Infection? The “Italian Injury Study” during the Serie a Championship

“…All the TDMs participated in a preliminary meeting in which the methodology of the study and the terms of data acquisition were described and discussed in detail. The collecting procedure was performed according to the international consensus statements for epidemiological study of injuries to professional football players [ 31 , 32 ]. TDMs of each football club compiled an online database provided with a standardized form that would gather all the data necessary for the study.…”