Epidemiological comparison of injuries in school and senior club rugby.

Abstract

(BrJ_ Sports Med 1996;30:213-217)

Epidemiological Review of Injuries in Rugby Union

“…Players who were tackled mostly suffered injuries to their lower limbs (51%), in comparison with their upper limbs (15%) and head (17%), while players who were tackling mostly suffered injuries to their arms (35%), followed by the head (28%) and the lower limbs (27%) [6]. Other reported causes of injury, such as rucks and mauls (15% to 36%), running and changing direction (10%) and entry into the scrum (1% to 7%), cause fewer injuries [8,10,13,15,30,32], but these can potentially be more serious, particularly in relation to entry into the scrums [22,23,26]. Approximately 40% of all rugby-related spinal cord injuries can be attributed to the scrum [24].…”

“…Most injuries occurring during a match affect the lower limbs (30% to 55% of injuries), followed by head and upper spinal injuries (14% to 30%), the upper limbs (15% to 20%) and finally the torso (10% to 14%) [7,[12][13][14][15]. It should be specified that in professional players, the head (including concussions) is the part of the body that is most often affected (25%), followed by the knee (14%-20%), thighs (13%-19%) and ankle (11%), then the shoulder (6.5%), hand (5.6%), leg (5.6%) and foot (3.5%) [8,[16][17][18][19].…”

Effect of a prevention programme on the incidence of rugby injuries among 15- and 16-year-old schoolboys

“…21 This study showed that the prevention programme did not reduce the overall injuries of the 15-and 16-year-old experimental group to significantly below the injury incidence in the corresponding control groups. This may be explained by the fact that factors such as aging, 15,21 level of play 20,21,24,25 and pressure to perform 19 may have led to inconsistencies in extrinsic injury incidence. In turn these changes in extrinsic injury incidence during the 2 years may be responsible for the incoherent pattern detected in the overall injury incidence, seeing that overall injury incidence consists of the sum of the intrinsic and extrinsic injury incidence.…”

“…6,7,22 Most school coaches, advocates of talent development and selectors put a high priority on the above abilities and implement programmes to develop bigger, stronger, faster and more skilful players who can excel at their sport. 6,8,23 However, these programmes do not place enough emphasis on the prevention 15,20,23,30 and rehabilitation 5,12,16 of previous injuries. Consequently, the rate of injuries at senior-school level may continue to increase unless preventive measures -sufficient for the modern game -are adopted.…”

“…Therefore the aim of this study was to determine whether an approved injury prevention programme has an effect on the rugby injuries (overall, intrinsic and extrinsic origiNAl reSeArch ArTicle effect of a prevention programme on the incidence of rugby injuries among 15-and 16-year-old schoolboys 15-(d = 1.61) and 16-year-old (d = 0.83) groups during the study period. During the second season there were no intrinsic injuries of a previous nature among both the experimental groups (0%), while in contrast intrinsic injuries of a previous nature still amounted to a significant fraction in both the control groups.…”