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Published on: May 1, 2018
Incidence of Hamstring Injury and Analysis of Risk Factors for Reinjury in Japanese Professional Football Players
Takefumi Ogawa1, Hiroki Funasaki1, Kota Tanaka1
1Department of Sports and Wellness Clinic, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
Background:
Hamstring injuries have a high incidence of reinjury. However, the risk factors for reinjury remain unknown.
Purposes:
To investigate the incidence of hamstring injuries in male Japanese professional football (soccer) players and identify the risk factors for reinjury.
Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.
Methods:
A total of 209 Japanese professional football players were included in this study. The authors investigated the overall number, incidence, affected muscles, and locations of both hamstring injuries and reinjuries. In addition, age, history of injury, affected muscle, type of injury, time of occurrence in the season, and intramuscular tendon injury were compared between players with and without reinjury (t test, Fisher exact test, and Bonferroni analysis).
Results:
Overall, there were 43 hamstring muscle injuries (HMIs) in 27 players. The mean incidence of injury was 0.60 (/1000 player-hours), including 2.30 (/1000 player-hours) in games and 0.35 (/1000 player-hours) during training. Among 40 legs that were treated nonoperatively, 12 developed reinjury. The reinjured muscles included the biceps femoris (BF; 9/27), semitendinosus (2/6), and semimembranosus (1/7). The locations of reinjury included the proximal third (3/13), middle third (4/17), and distal third (5/10). There was no significant difference between the reinjury and no-reinjury groups in terms of the evaluated items. However, in BF injuries, the type of injury was significantly associated with the incidence of reinjury. The rate of BF injury recurrence according to injury type was 0% (0/9) for type 1-M injuries, 67% (6/9) for type 1-T injuries, and 33% (3/9) for type 2 injuries (P = .0127).
Conclusion:
This study demonstrated that the overall incidence of HMI in male Japanese professional football players was 0.60 (/1000 player-hours), including 2.30 (/1000 player-hours) in games and 0.35 (/1000 player-hours) during training. The rate of recurrence was 30%. In the BF, the injury type classified on magnetic resource imaging was the only factor associated with recurrence. Bleeding around the intramuscular tendon without structural tendon injury was an important factor for predicting the recurrence of BF injuries. Type 1-T injuries should be managed differently from type 1-M injuries.
