Abstract
Background and Objectives: Sport-related musculoskeletal injuries (MSK-Is) are a common health issue in athletes that can lead to reduced performance. The aim of this scoping review was to synthetize available evidence on injury incidence rates (IIRs), types, and sites that affect the musculoskeletal (MSK) system of adult athletes. Materials and Methods: We performed a scoping review on the Pubmed database limiting our search to 33 Olympic sports. Results: We identified a total of 1022 papers, and of these 162 were examined in full for the purpose of this review. Archery was the sport with the highest risk of injuries to the upper extremities, marathons for the lower extremities, and triathlon and weightlifting for the body bust. In the majority of the sports examined, muscle/tendon strain and ligament sprain were the most common MSK-Is diagnoses, while athletics, karate, and football were the sports with the highest IIRs, depending on the methods used for their calculations. Conclusions: Our scoping review highlighted the general lack and dishomogeneity in the collection of data on MSK-Is in athletes.
Highlights
Musculoskeletal injury (MSK-I) is a general term that includes any trauma that causes damage to muscles, bones, tendons, joints, ligaments, and other soft tissues
With the exception of marathons where specific MSK incidence rates (IIRs) were available, in all other cases, data that are reported in Table 1 referred to any kind of injury
When considering the different IIRs reporting methods, for 12 disciplines data available on IIRs were expressed as injuries/1000 h exposures and archery (0.00536/1000 h) was the sport with the lowest IIR, while athletics
Summary
Musculoskeletal injury (MSK-I) is a general term that includes any trauma that causes damage to muscles, bones, tendons, joints, ligaments, and other soft tissues. MSK-Is represents one of the most common health conditions in athletes, with consequences in terms of the lowering of performance, or withdrawal from competitions, and of economic costs [1]. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) in its manual on sports injuries defined. MSK-Is as “new or recurring musculoskeletal complaints incurred during competition or training that require medical attention, regardless of the potential absence from competition or training” [2]. The origin of the term athlete is from the Greek “athlos” that means achievement and serves to indicate an extraordinary physical performance [3].
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