Injuries and injury risk factors among British army infantry soldiers during predeployment training

Abstract

British infantry injury rates were lower than those reported for US infantry (range 101-223 injuries/100 soldier-years), and younger age and previous injury were identified as independent risk factors. Future efforts should target reducing the incidence of traumatic injuries, especially those related to physical training and/or sports.

Musculoskeletal Injuries in British Army Recruits: A Retrospective Study of Incidence and Training Outcome in Different Infantry Regiments

“…CIC Parachute regiment included specific P-Company training which involved extra fitness training specifically, running and loaded marches (20 miles) [3,14]. Inter-regimental cultural differences may be considered to contribute to injury variation.…”

“…While it is clear that MSK injuries are detrimental to the British Army [1,5,13,14,18,19], it is not clear what constitutes an effective management strategy [3,20]. A wide variety of demographical injury data has been published.…”

“…For many, this abrupt increase in physical activity is widely believed to contribute to the subsequent development of MSKI [1,9,14,15,17,18].…”

“…Although the global appetite to identify effective injury prevention strategies is strong, population specific epidemiological data is limited [1,3,16]. Accumulating accurate and meaningful injury data is a prerequisite for identifying injury patterns and determining the direction of subsequent interventions [3,4,14,15].…”

Isokinetic strength of fully operational U.S. Navy Seals with a previous history of shoulder and knee injury

“…Injury prevention strategies focus on improving human capabilities and reducing modifiable risk factors for injury but the number of prospectively identified risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries remains relatively low. Previous injury is frequently cited and may be the most common prospectively determine risk factor for injury in both civilian and military populations regardless of anatomic location, type of injury, or tissue involved [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The reasoning is likely multifactorial, and the effect on functional joint stability likely plays a prominent role.…”