[Accidents related to physical education in school: epidemiologic and preventive approach]

Generally speaking, this category of accidents seems to cause mostly relatively mild injuries. It could explain, at least in part, why there are so few papers on this topic in the medical literature except for clinical reports usually based on hospitalized cases. The main results of a study of the 9261 physical education accidents registered within five years in primary and secondary schools in Basle and Geneva are used to illustrate their epidemiological characteristics, as well as the localization and the severity of the injuries. The sources of data are the files of the accident insurance companies. Initial operational definitions, data sources, measurement of exposure to risk and the (largely criticized) notion of individual accident proneness are constraints and conditions of a pertinent epidemiological approach which have to be carefully taken into consideration. This approach should be combined with the clinical and the ergonomical approaches in order to get the best possible pictures of the causes, mechanisms and consequences not only of accidents in general but especially of those occurring in physical activities in childhood and adolescence. Some considerations on prevention are briefly outlined here. They intend to take into account the risk factors related to the tasks, the circumstances and especially to the student himself taken as an individual involved in a growth and development dynamics.