Adolescent track and field injuries presenting to US emergency departments

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Track and field (T&F) is a highly popular sport for adolescents. The diversity of running, jumping, and throwing events within the sport can result in unique injury patterns for adolescent track and field participants. The purpose of this study was to estimate injury risk in adolescent T&F and describe the types of injuries resulting in ED visits, classified by T&F events.

Methods

Emergency department (ED) data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System were obtained for a 20-year period from 2000 through 2019. Cases involving 14- to 18-year-olds participating in T&F were classified by sex, case severity, involved body region, and the T&F event patients were engaged in at the time of their injury. National estimates and Injury rates were calculated using national high school T&F participation data. Longitudinal trends in ED visits were measured using linear regression. Rate ratios (RRs) were used to compare the risk and severity of ED visits by sex.

Results

8,060 track and field related ED encounters were observed, representing an estimated 272,227 encounters nationally over the 20-year study period. The rate of ED encounters increased significantly over the study period (p < 0.001). Adolescent females exhibited a higher rate of ED encounters (RR: 1.23, 95% CI: 1.22–1.24), but a lower rate of hospital admissions (RR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.64–0.73) compared to males. The lower extremity was the most commonly injured body region for most T&F events, but this differed for sprinting, high jumping, shot put, and javelin events. Most T&F events resulted in unique injury patterns characteristic of their athletic demands.

Conclusions

There was an increasing trend of ED visits from adolescent T&F participants throughout the 20-year study period with different injury patterns observed by sex and T&F event discipline.

KEYWORDS:

• Track and field
• Adolescence
• running
• jumping
• throwing
• injury
• National electronic injury surveillance system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.