Sport Injuries of Karate During Training: An Epidemiologic Study in Iran

Karate is a public sport that has athletes in various age ranges and abundant active sport clubs in Iran. The pattern of injury in this sport in Iranian athletes seems different from other countries.

This study was performed with the purpose of considering the incidence and type of injury of karate athletes aged below 30 years from Tehran, Iran clubs.

In a cross-sectional study, 10 karate clubs were selected in Tehran. Clubs were selected based on a cluster method from 5 different geographical regions of Tehran. All injuries were collected based on athletes' or clubs' weekly report with a designed questionnaire. The injuries were classified according to: low, medium and severe injury. Collected data was analyzed with SPSS software version 17.

620 athletes were studied totally and incidence rate of injury per athletes was 16.1% and 20.2 per 100 athletes. Ninety percent of injuries were during bout practice, 6% during fitness and 4% during kata. The rate of injury was more common in athletes with weight less than 70 kg and lower sport experience (P ≤ 0.05). The commonest locations for injury were head and neck followed by trunk, lower and upper limb, respectively. Just 2 cases needed surgical intervention and no one led to decreased level of consciousness. The most common type of injury was contusion, bruise and superficial scratch (64%).

Severe injury was uncommon in this study and similar to other Iranian studies head and neck had the most injuries. Athletes with lower experience and lower weight were associated with higher injuries.