Did you know sports accidents cause approximately 36,000 Australians annually to have a hospital stay? But if it is soccer, wheeled motor sports or biking that is most hazardous depends on how you look at it.
When it comes to injuries sustained from games which are worse enough to get you hospitalised, which sport would be the riskiest?
It Is Dependent upon How you look at it, a brand new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) indicates.
The various forms of football are responsible for your largest percentage of the entire number of sports-related accidents in Australia requiring hospitalisation — almost a third.
And of the footy codes, Aussie rules had the greatest population-based levels of injury and hospitalisation, together with 18 to 17 cases per 100,000 inhabitants respectively.
So, is that this justification for people who worry when the guys in their own life — and it’s mostly men — play footy? Perhaps not.
The finding is more a manifestation of the large amounts of Individuals who play footy, instead of it being essentially the more dangerous.
After the amount of participants will be factored in, wheeled Motor sports, for example motorcycling and go-carting, seem riskier with over 3,500 hospitalisations per 100,000 participants. To give some perspective this is eight times more than the annual hospitalisations from falls; where’s the go-kart prevention training effort to match the resources put into falls prevention training.
This was followed closely by roller sports, such as roller skating and skateboarding, with over 2,000 hospitalisations per 100,000 participants.
Roller sports had nearly twice the injury rate of Australian Rules and rugby, that had 1,319 and 1,292 hospitalisations per 100,000 participants respectively.
The pros and cons of sports
But harm researcher and AIHW spokesman Professor James Harrison says that the findings will need to be kept in view and are not in themselves a reason to quit throwing on some basketball shorts and a training top to go play some sport
“There are very good reasons to engage in sport. Sport’s fun and a really good way to get fit and stay fit,” stated manager of the Research Centre for Injury Studies at Flinders University, James Harrison.
He also points out that the obvious riskiness of wheeled Motor sports may be exaggerated somewhat due to issues with the way the information used in the investigation has been collected.
He continued n claiming, “Motor sports come out very high. I suspect part of that’s just to do with the roughness of the information [collected] in hospitals.”
In Regards to the severity of injuries you may sustain, three sports stick out. Cycling, motor sports and equestrian based sports had a particularly large proportion of more severe injuries requiring more than just a cast or a pressure relief cushion, with roughly one quarter of cases regarded as life-threatening.
But wheeled motor sports has been the action which accounted for the greatest total number of days spent by patients in hospital — over 9,500 days.
The report revealed that people suffering sporting injuries were under 35 and largely guys. The most commonly affected body area has been the knee and Lower leg, and also the most frequent diagnosis was a fracture.
But what factors cause injury?
The report did not explore any variables related to injuries besides sport, however findings from a 19 year longitudinal study on professional American NBA players had some interesting insights. They conducted their research using detailed player profiles that each team submits at the season start that includes a permanent identification number, player position, weight, height, age, demographic and clinical information, and years of NBA playing experience. They then linked this to the injury database kept by The National Basketball Athletic Trainers Association.
What they found was that while professional basketball today has become a highly physical, high-contact sport; player demographics revealed no correlation between injury rate and age, weight, height or number of years playing NBA. This is interesting as if there isn’t a correlation with NBA, there is likely no correlation in other sports.
Additionally whilst few changes have been made to the sublimated basketball uniforms players wear, because the most common injury was lateral ankle sprains players have begun increasingly adopting sneakers designed to protect the ankle
While we can report on the most dangerous sports’, understanding what traits may correlate to sports injuries may help advance our understanding of how to prevent injuries in all sports.
