Head injuries in professional football (soccer): Results of video analysis verified by an accident insurance registry

Abstract

Background Video analysis is one of the most commonly applied methods for analysing football injuries. Purpose The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy of video analysis for recording head injuries in professional football from official matches in the four highest men’s professional football leagues in Germany. Methods In this cohort study, head injuries detected by means of video analysis of all official matches over one season (2017–18) were compared to head injuries registered with the German statutory accident insurance. Results Our video analysis yielded 359 head injuries of 287 players. The comparison of head injuries found in our video analysis to those registered with the accident insurance only yielded a match in 23.1% (n = 83), which presents a rather low verification rate. The verification rates varied between the leagues (7.0–30.8%). All injuries documented in the accident insurance registry were found in the video analysis (100%). The types of head injury most often verified by the accident insurance registry (n = 83) were contusion (43.4%), bone fractures (19.3%) and skin lacerations (18.1%). Only 66 of the 359 head injuries (18.4%) resulted in absence from at least one training session and involved a mean time loss of 18.5 days (1–87 days). Conclusion The mismatch between the number of head injuries found in the video analysis and head injuries registered with the accident insurance is an important methodological issue in scientific research. The low verification rate seems to be due to the unclear correlation between injury severity and clinical consequences of head injuries detected by means of video analysis and the failure of football clubs to register minor head injuries with the accident insurance.

Training matters: Heading incidence and characteristics in children's and youth football (soccer) players

“…The gold standard for analyzing head injury mechanisms in football is video observation, [13][14][15] which more and more frequently is used to assess heading exposure. [16][17][18] Recently published studies investigated heading frequencies and types by the use of video observation in a large-scale cross-sectional design across eight European countries 16 or by direct observation in an international youth football tournament.…”

Incidence, characteristics and cost of head, neck and dental injuries in non‐professional football (soccer) using 3 years of sports injury insurance data

“…Understanding the incidence, characteristics and costs associated with specific injuries to the head and neck regions is important as these injuries should not be seen as analogous. For example, while head contusions might be one of the most prevalent types of head injury in football, these injuries usually recover without long‐term deleterious effects 9 . In contrast, dental injuries, such as a broken or avulsed tooth, may have long‐term functional, social, psychological and financial consequences not only at the time of the injury but years into the future 10 .…”

“…example, while head contusions might be one of the most prevalent types of head injury in football, these injuries usually recover without long-term deleterious effects. 9 In contrast, dental injuries, such as a broken or avulsed tooth, may have long-term functional, social, psychological and financial consequences not only at the time of the injury but years into the future. 10 Furthermore, football-related neck injuries are frequently not reported separately in the literature or reported as case studies.…”

Injury Surveillance in Professional Mexican Footballers: A Brief Exploratory Study

“…Injuries of professional football players have been the subject of numerous studies, the earliest of which were mostly cases of specific lesions. Serious attempts to define the incidence, type, and rate of injuries among professional football players began in 1983 with Ekstrand's work on the nature of football injuries and the possibility of decreasing the number of injuries by professional Swedish footballers (Ekstrand., 1982;Lundgårdh et al, 2020;Krutsch et al, 2021). Several concepts that today are widely accepted were novel results of Ekstrand's work.…”