Role of illness in male professional football: not a major contributor to time loss

Abstract

The illness incidence among male professional football players is low compared with the injury incidence. We found that the highest illness burden was caused by illness to the respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract and cardiovascular system.

Carefully executed studies of illness in elite sport: still room to improve methods in at least five ways

“…In the soccer study, Bjorneboe et al counted an illness episode as any physical or psychological symptom that resulted in the player being unable to participate fully in training or match play. In studies reporting incidence of illness during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, any athlete requiring medical attention was counted 2 3. These definitions appear to have simply replaced injuries by illness in the same context 4.…”

“…In the first1 of our two editorials we discussed if cross-country skiers were more prone to illness than soccer players, illustrated by the carefully executed studies of illness by Svendsen et al 2 and Bjorneboe et al 3. In this second editorial, we discuss why counting and comparing numbers in these kind of studies are associated with methodological challenges.…”

Screening is dead. Long live screening!

“…In a recently-published study of football players in the Norwegian, Swedish and English Premier Leagues, Bjørneboe et al 5 found that illness is only a minor contributor to the total health burden, with players getting sick on average once every two seasons. In contrast, surveillance data from the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic team show that, in certain sports, such as swimming, rowing and cross-country skiing, common illnesses have a far greater impact on athletes' participation and performance than do injuries (unpublished data—for methods) 6.…”

New data on illness in elite sport: are immediate flights home after competition a changeable risk factor?

“…Even so, it is reasonable to believe that athletes downplay mental symptoms as they are afraid these might influence their career. Svendsen et al 1 excluded two athletes for one season each, due to confirmed cases of mononucleosis, while Bjorneboe et al 2 did not exclude any athletes with prolonged symptoms or rehabilitation periods. On the contrary, they showed that cardiovascular diseases, included cardiac arrest, had the third highest illness burden even though they made up only 0.8% of the illness episodes.…”

“…Hence, the papers by Svendsen et al 1 and Bjorneboe et al 2 describing the incidence of illnesses in cross-country skiers and soccer players, respectively, are valuable contributions. In this, the first of two editorials we discuss those athletes most prone to illness, and how to modify their risk.…”