Temporal trends in incidence of time-loss injuries in four male professional North American sports over 13 seasons

Abstract

Sports-related injuries increase healthcare cost burden, and in some instances have harmful long term physical and psychological implications. There is currently a lack of comprehensive data on temporal injury trends across professional North American sports. The purpose of this study was to compare temporal trends, according to incidence and time-loss injuries, by body part in professional baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey. Public injury data from Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League, and National Hockey League from 2007 to December 2019 were extracted and used. A mean of 62.49 injuries per 100 players per season was recorded for all professional sports. The groin/hip/thigh reported the greatest season proportional injury incidence for baseball, football, and ice hockey, with the groin/hip/thigh as the third highest injury incidence in basketball. When stratifying by more specific body part groupings, the knee demonstrated the greatest injury proportional incidence for basketball, football, and ice hockey, with the knee as the third highest proportional injury incidence for baseball. There was an increased in basketball ankle injuries following 2011–2012 season. Football and ice hockey reported the greatest concussion proportion incidence, with football demonstrating an increase in concussions over time, and a substantial increase in concussions from the 2014 to 2015 season. These publicly extracted data and findings can be used as a shared resource for professional baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey for future individual and across sport collaborations concerning resource allocation and decision making in order to improve player health.

Elbow Injuries Among MLB Pitchers Increased During Covid-19 Disrupted Season, But Not Other Baseball Injuries

“…One way to identify injury incidence among MLB players is through publicly available data. [15][16][17] Publicly available data improves transparency, and allows for collaboration among organizations to improve data robustness and distribution among stakeholders. 18,19 This transparency and collaboration amongst organizations is essential to promote an open science environment.…”

“…20,22 Publicly available data is an example of data that is in line with this open science recommendation, and has been utilized across professional leagues with a high reporting reliability. 15,23 Publicly available data is accessed through a computer iterative repeatable process which involves an automated collection of information from webpages, an efficient method of data extraction. 15,24 This process improves repeatability, and offers the potential for collaborative league wide injury risk identification and injury mitigation programs.…”

“…15,23 Publicly available data is accessed through a computer iterative repeatable process which involves an automated collection of information from webpages, an efficient method of data extraction. 15,24 This process improves repeatability, and offers the potential for collaborative league wide injury risk identification and injury mitigation programs. 15 The primary aim of this study was to use publicly available data to compare injury rates during the 2015-2019 seasons, COVID-19 shortened season (2020), and the 2021 season stratified by body region and position (pitchers versus position players).…”

Validity and reliability study of the Turkish version of the ‘A Sport Fitness Index’

“…The rates and types of sports injuries differ according to many reasons such as age, gender and sports branches 3 . Also, the risk of sports injuries in professional athletes is higher than in amateurs because of reasons such as training times, biomechanical loads, physical and psychological stress 4 . Sports injuries often occur in athletes who play high‐impact sports such as football, volleyball, basketball and hockey that involve high‐speed running, jumping, spinning, cutting, pivoting or deflecting 5 .…”

“…3 Also, the risk of sports injuries in professional athletes is higher than in amateurs because of reasons such as training times, biomechanical loads, physical and psychological stress. 4 Sports injuries often occur in athletes who play high-impact sports such as football, volleyball, basketball and hockey that involve high-speed running, jumping, spinning, cutting, pivoting or deflecting. 5 Sports injuries can cause training/match loss and reduce the performance of the athlete in the short term, 5 and much greater consequences, especially in young athletes in the long term.…”