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Five-Year Trends in Reported National Football League Injuries
Gillian Bedard1, David Wyndham Lawrence1,2
1Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.
Objective:
To determine the incidence of all-cause injury and concussion in the National Football League (NFL) over a 5-season time span (2012-2016).
Design:
Prospective descriptive epidemiological study.
Setting:
National Football League Injury Report data from 2012 to 2016.
Participants:
National Football League players.
Interventions:
None (descriptive study).
Main Outcome Measures:
Injury report data were collected prospectively for all NFL injuries from 5 seasons (2012-2016). The incidences of reported concussions, knee injuries, and all-cause injury were compared across the 5 seasons using the Kruskal-Wallis rank-sum test.
Results:
A total of 10 927 injuries were identified across the 5 seasons, including 752 (6.9%) concussions. The top 3 most injured areas included the knee (17.2%), ankle (13.6%), and shoulder (8.8%). Defensive backs consistently had the highest number of all-cause injuries per season. When comparing across years, there was a significant decrease in all-cause injury in 2016 compared with 2015, a significant decrease in knee injuries in 2016 compared with 2015, and a significant increase in concussion in 2015 compared with 2014 (P < 0.05).
Conclusions:
Reported all-cause injury incidence and knee injury incidence is currently on the decline. However, reported concussion incidence has recently increased, perhaps due to increased awareness and rule changes implemented to aid in the detection and treatment of concussion. Strategies to reduce injury and improve injury awareness should continue to be explored.
