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Prevalence and severity of injuries and illnesses among university handball players: A prospective cohort study
Ayaka Takegami1, Sonoko Mashimo2, Suguru Ichihara3
1College of Sport and Wellness, Rikkyo University, 1-2-26 Kitano, Niiza, Saitama, 352-8558, Japan.
Objectives:
To clarify the prevalence and severity of injuries and illnesses in university handball players.
Design:
Prospective cohort study.
Setting:
Survey-based online questionnaire.
Participants:
231 university handball players (109 males and 122 females) over 38 weeks.
Main Outcome Measures:
Each participant completed the Japanese version of the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center Questionnaire on Health Problems every Sunday. The main outcome measures were the average weekly prevalence of injuries and illnesses, duration, average weekly severity scores rated on a scale of 0-100 based on answers to four key questions, and cumulative severity scores.
Results:
The average weekly prevalence was 27.4 % (95 % CI: 25.6-29.1 %) for injuries and 2.2 % (95 % CI: 1.6-2.8 %) for illnesses. Among injuries, traumatic injuries had higher average weekly severity scores (50.0 vs 32.0, p < 0.05) and cumulative severity scores per case (65.0 vs 42.0, p < 0.05) than overuse injuries. Conversely, overuse injuries lasted approximately 10 days longer than traumatic injuries (18 days vs 10 days, p < 0.05). Traumatic knee injuries and overuse shoulder injuries ranked the highest in prevalence, duration, and cumulative severity scores.
Conclusions:
We found that, although overuse injuries were less severe than traumatic injuries, they interfered with handball activities for extended periods.
