gms | German Medical Science

7th EFSMA – European Congress of Sports Medicine, 3rd Central European Congress of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Annual Assembly of the German and the Austrian Society of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Austrian Society of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

26.-29.10.2011, Salzburg, Austria

Overuse injuries in elite female handball

Meeting Abstract

7th EFSMA – European Congress of Sports Medicine, 3rd Central European Congress of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Salzburg, 26.-29.10.2011. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2011. Doc11esm199

doi: 10.3205/11esm199, urn:nbn:de:0183-11esm1990

Published: October 24, 2011

© 2011 Ferri-Caruana et al.
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Outline

Text

Objective: To document the impact of time exposure to handball and the incidence of overuse injuries in an elite female handball team over four competitive seasons.

Material/Methods: The team had two physiotherapists who were at all times in practices and games. Injuries were recorded by one of them at the end of each session/ game in an injury registration diary. The diary was filled with the next information: Player name, date of the injury, anatomic structure injured, days off training, number and type of physiotherapist treatments and exposition time [1]. The number of players per position was: 27 back players, 13 wing players, 10 line players and 9 goalkeepers. Injury incidence was calculated as the number of injuries per 1000 hours of exposure.

The coefficient of determination R2 was calculated to find out about the relationship between exposition time and injury incidence. The Kruskal Wallis test showed the significant differences in the number of injuries throughout the months per season. Level of significance α<0.05.

Results: 338 (61.3%) were overuse injuries. The incidence of overuse injuries was 30.7 injuries/1000 h of exposure. There was a significant statistical relationship between exposition time and injury incidence (p=0.004). Furthermore, the average value of overuse injuries was significantly different between the months (p=0.01). Specifically, the highest overuse injury incidence occurred at the beginning of the season (August with 55.2 injuries/1000 h of handball exposition and September with 38.1 injuries/ 1000h of handball exposure) and the late period of competition (March with 28.6 injuries/1000 h of handball exposition and April with 30 injuries/ 1000 h of handball exposition)

Conclusion: This study shows that elite female handball players were more susceptible to overuse injuries in the pre-season and the late competition training phases [2]. Furthermore, this data may provide helpful information to coaches and athletic trainers since it gives feedback for a better control of the training loads.


References

1.
Olsen OE, Myklebust G, Engebretsen L, Bahr R. Injury pattern in youth team handball: a comparison of two prospective registration methods. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2006;16: 426–32.
2.
Gabbet TJ. Influence of training and match intensity on injuries in rugby league players. Journal of Sports Sciences. 2004;22(5):409-17.