Ireland in the World Cup: trauma orthopaedic workloads

To determine if whether there were any changes in numbers of orthopaedic injuries at the emergency/ orthopaedic trauma department requiring treatment that could be related to televised home matches during World Cup 2002. Numbers of patients attending with musculoskeletal injuries directly attributable to world cup celebrations were collected during the four home matches. Attendances from midnight before the match until midday the day after the match were recorded. Control groups were matched from the previous month of May, and matched with the same day of the week for each of the four groups. Significantly more patients were admitted to the trauma service, referred to orthopaedic outpatients, and referred to the minor trauma clinic in the match versus control groups. 280 patients required onward referral during the match period compared with 233 during the control period. Televised Irish matches during the World Cup significantly increased the workload of the trauma orthopaedic service with musculoskeletal injuries. This should be taken into account when planning for such events in the future.