Youth American football quarterback injuries: a descriptive study of 15 years of retrospective data

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To describe common injuries of youth American football quarterbacks (QBs) cared for in a regional sports medicine center within the last 15 years.

Methods: A retrospective chart review of all male youth American football QB patients who sustained sports-related injuries at a regional pediatric medical center between 01/01/2003 and 10/01/2018. Patients were identified using HoundDog to search the term ‘quarterback.’ Records were then reviewed to identify all male QBs ≤ 18 years of age. Injures that were not a result of football participation were excluded. Main outcome variables were injured anatomic locations, injury types, surgical status, and settings in which the injury was sustained. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the outcome variables.

Results: A total of 374 QBs (mean age: 14.6 ± 2.1) sustained a total of 423 injuries. The top 5 injured anatomic locations were shoulder (22%), knee (15%) head/neck (14%), elbow (13%), and wrist/hand/lower arm (11%). Most injuries (64.3%) were acute; 35.7% were chronic in nature. Most acute injuries (55.5%) occurred during games. Of the chronic injuries, 47.0% occurred during off-season and 34.4% occurred in-season. Among all injuries, 22.9% were surgical cases, and the top 3 anatomic locations of surgery were knee (35.0%), shoulder (20.7%), and elbow (18.7%).

Conclusions: The shoulder is the most commonly injured body part among young QBs seeking care in a regional pediatric medical center, although the knee is the most commonly injured body part that requires surgery. Most QB injuries are acute in mechanism and the majority of these acute injuries occur during games.

KEYWORDS:

• Pediatric and adolescent football players
• epidemiologic study
• injury rates
• concussions
• overhead athlete

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the research team members at Boston Children’s Hospital Division of Sports Medicine and The Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention. We also would like to thank the Scholarship Oversight Committee of the Boston Children’s Hospital Division of Sports Medicine for their input and guidance throughout this project.

Financial disclosure

All authors have no financial relationships relevant to this study to disclose.

Declaration of interest

I, William P. Meehan III, MD disclose the following conflicts: ABC-Clio publishing for the sale of the books Kids, Sports and Concussion a Guide for Coaches and Parents, and Concussions; Springer International for the book Head and Neck Injuries in Young Athletes; Wolters Kluwer for working as an author for UpToDate; My research is funded, in part, by philanthropic support from the National Hockey League Alumni Association through the Corey C Griffin Pro-Am tournament and a grant from the National Football League. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial relationships to disclose.