A 7‐year study on risks and costs of knee injuries in male and female youth participants in 12 sports

Abstract

Knee injuries are common and account in various sports for 15-50% of all sports injuries. The cost of knee injuries is therefore a large part of the cost for medical care of sports injuries. Furthermore, the risk of acquiring a knee injury during sports is considered higher for females than for males. The nationwide organization "Youth and Sports" represents the major source of organized sports and recreation for Swiss youth and engages annually around 370000 participants in the age group of 14 to 20 years. The purpose of this study was to combine data on knee injuries from two sources, the first being data on the exposure to risk found in the activity registration in "Youth and Sports" and the second injuries with their associated costs resulting from the activities and filed at the Swiss Military Insurance. This allowed calculation of knee injury incidences, to compare risks between males and females and to estimate the costs of medical treatment. The study comprises 3864 knee injuries from 12 sports during 7 years. Females were significantly more at risk in six sports: alpinism, downhill skiing, gymnastics, volleyball, basketball and team handball. The incidences of knee injuries and of cruciate ligament injuries in particular, together with the costs per hour of participation, all displayed the same sports as the top five for both females and males: ice hockey, team handball, soccer, downhill skiing and basketball. Female alpinism and gymnastics had also high rankings. Knee injuries comprised 10% of all injuries in males and 13% in females, but their proportional contribution to the costs per hour of participation was 27% and 33%, respectively. From this study it can be concluded that females were significantly more at risk for knee injuries than males in six sports and that knee injuries accounted for a high proportion of the costs of medical treatment.

A Survey of Injuries to the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Among Makkah Population, Saudi Arabia: Prevalence and Observations on Injury Mechanism.

“…Previous studies reported that there is no tendency for the age of ACL injury occurrence. [19,20,21,22] The results of this study demonstrated that man's had a 5.3-fold greater incidence rate of ACL injuries than did females. Previous studies have also reported gender differences in the incidence risk of ACL injury.…”

“…[19] reported that the combined number of anterior and posterior cruciate ligament injuries was 357 in boys and 113 in girls among participants in sports activities aged between the 20 to 30 years (63.5%). Even though our data focused only on ACL injuries.…”

Epidemiology of Multiligament Knee Reconstruction

“…One possible explanation is the difference in sport participation. Although several studies have established that female athletes have a higher prevalence of knee injuries than their male counterparts, male participation in sports with higher collision forces (eg, football) may put them at greater risk for serious knee injuries, including multiligament and other knee dislocation injuries [3,7,13,15]. Since this dataset does not include the mechanism of injury, the number of patients who sustained their injury in sports is unknown.…”

Basketball Injuries

“…In a similar study, in a mixed sample (77.8% Ͻ age 19), 55.1% of basketball injuries were sprain/strains [28]. In a more in-depth analysis of knee injuries, de Loës et al [30] found that in boys 21% of knee injuries were meniscal tears, 19% were ACL/posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) ruptures, 10% were medial/lateral collateral ligament tears and 32% were nonspecific ruptures. However, for girls, only 13% were meniscal tears with 18% ACL/PCL ruptures but 21% were medial/lateral collateral ligament tears.…”

“…A comparison of injury rates from prospective and retrospective research is shown in table 1 and covers high school [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], physical education class [22], clubs/sports organizations [23][24][25][26][27], and hospital emergency departments [28,29]. In addition, studies reporting incidence data specifically for knee [18,19,30], ankle [31,32], head [33], and orofacial [34][35][36] injuries are listed. Unfortunately, the injury literature on youth basketball suffers from a broad range of methodological shortcomings, including widely varying definitions of a reportable injury, limited measures of exposure, differing metrics of risk, and poor delineation of the population at risk.…”