Concussion is not associated with elevated rates of lower-extremity musculoskeletal injuries in National Football League Players

ABSTRACT

Objective

Emerging evidence has identified an ~2x elevated risk of musculoskeletal (MSK) injury in the year following a concussion. Most of these studies have examined a single college/university athletic department and may lack generalizability to professional sports. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the odds of post-concussion MSK injury utilizing publicly available National Football League (NFL) injury reports.

Methods

Concussions were identified through a review of published NFL injury reports during the 2015, 2016, and 2017 regular seasons. Concussed players were matched by team and position, and injuries were tracked for both groups for the remainder of the season. A chi-square analysis compared the frequency of MSK injury in both groups and a Cox Proportional Hazard model calculated the risk of sustaining a subsequent MSK injury.

Results

There were 322 concussed NFL players who met inclusion criteria and were successfully matched. From the time of concussion through the remainder of the season, 21.4% of the concussed players were injured and 26.4% of control participants were injured. There was no difference in MSK injury rates (p = 0.166), and the relative risk ratio was 0.90 for subsequent injury in the concussion group. There was no difference in the time to event for subsequent MSK between the two groups (p = 0.123).

Conclusion

The primary finding of this study was no elevated risk of post-concussion MSK in NFL football players.

KEYWORDS:

• Injury risk reduction
• mild traumatic brain injury
• professional athletics

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.