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Citation
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Murday PF, McLoughlin DE, Wild JT, Kwon S, Burgess J, Labella CR. J. Athl. Train. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub. |
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Abstract
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CONTEXT: Sport specialization, commonly defined as intensive year-round training in a single sport at the exclusion of other sports, has been associated with increased risk for overuse injury. There are two pathways to becoming highly specialized: (1) having only ever played one sport ("exclusive highly specialized") or (2) quitting other sports to focus on a single sport ("evolved highly specialized"). Understanding injury patterns between different groups of highly specialized athletes will inform the development of injury prevention strategies.
OBJECTIVE: To compare distribution of injury types (acute, overuse, serious overuse) among evolved highly specialized athletes, exclusive highly specialized athletes, and low-moderate specialized athletes.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: Tertiary care pediatric sports medicine clinic between January 2015 and April 2019. PATIENTS: 1171 patients (aged 13.14-17.83 years, 59.8% female) who played at least one organized sport, presented with a sports-related injury, and completed a sports participation survey. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Distribution of injury types (acute, overuse, serious overuse).
RESULTS: Percentage of injuries due to overuse was similar between exclusive and evolved highly specialized athletes (59.2% vs 53.9%; p=0.28). Compared to low-moderate specialized athletes, exclusive and evolved highly specialized athletes had higher percentage of injuries due to overuse (45.3% vs. 59.2% and 53.9, respectively; p=0.001). Multivariate analysis of the highly specialized groups revealed sport type to be a significant predictor of higher percentage of injuries due to overuse, with individual sport athletes having significantly increased odds of sustaining an overuse injury than team sport athletes (OR=1.95;CI:1.17-3.24).
CONCLUSIONS: Distribution of injury types is similar between evolved and exclusive highly specialized youth athletes, with both groups having higher percentage of injuries due to overuse compared to low-moderate specialized athletes. Among highly specialized athletes, playing an individual sport was associated with higher proportion of overuse injuries compared to playing a team sport.
Language: en |