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Abstract
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CONTEXT: Flag football is promoted as a safer alternative to tackle football. This may be one reason why participation rates have risen by 39% over the past three years. Despite rising participation, there remains a lack of epidemiologic research on sport-specific injuries and associated relative risk.
OBJECTIVE: To prospectively document epidemiology of injury in youth flag football.
DESIGN: Descriptive Epidemiology Study.
SETTING: Regional and National youth flag football tournaments.
PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: 1939 (1744 boys; 195 girls) athletes, ages 5 to 12 years. An athletic trainer prospectively monitored athletes for sport-related injury and exposures.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Athlete risk of injury and injury rates were calculated overall and by gender. Injury characteristics were reported for the total population and by gender.
RESULTS: 47 injuries to unique individuals were recorded in 1,939 athletes with a total of 9,228 athlete exposures (AEs). The overall risk of injury was 2.4% (95%CI 1.8, 3.2), overall injury rate 5.1 per 1000 AE (95% CI 3.7, 6.8). Of the 47 injuries, 36 occurred in males (8,365 AE) and 11 in females (863 AE). There was a statistically significant higher risk in girls as evidenced by both Injury Risk Ratio 2.73 (95% CI 1.41, 5.3) and Injury Rate Ratio 2.96 (95% CI 1.51, 5.82). The most common injury sites were Head/Face/Neck (n=15; 31.9%) followed by Ankle/Foot (n=9; 19.1%); most common types of injury were contusion (55.3%), sprain/subluxation (14.9%), and general trauma (10.6%); 74.5% of all injuries resulted from direct impact.
CONCLUSION: While the competition injury rate for youth flag football was lower than studies reporting comparable tackle football data, frequencies by body part, type and mechanism were similar. Given that most injuries were related to some form of impact and predominantly contusions, adopting minimal protective equipment or padding may reduce the number of these reported injuries.
Language: en |