Abstract
BackgroundHand injuries are common in sports and associated with high dropout rates and costs.Hence, efforts should strive for further risk prevention measures in order to increase safety in sports. This implies knowledge of sports injury risk profiles. So far, major surveillance programs exist mainly in Anglo-American countries, reflecting the specific concerns of sports in this part of the world. Data on sports injuries within Europe are scarce. As sports behaviour appears to vary demographically, we hypothesised that risk injury profiles differ as well.MethodsTo assess whether the described sports injuries of the hand are applicable to the German population, we performed a five-year retrospective, single-centre analysis of sports-related hand injuries, using data from the Enterprise Clinical Research Data Warehouse of the Hannover Medical School.ResultsNotable differences in comparison to other data were observed. Ball sports, cycling and equestrian sports caused most of the recorded hand injuries, which were predominantly fractures of the wrist and hand. Hand injuries in equestrian sports were associated with significantly higher operation and hospitalisation rates as well as a significantly longer inpatient treatment.ConclusionRisk profiles for sports-related hand injuries appear to differ not only in terms of age- and sex, but also geographically. Nation- and Europe-wide hand trauma registries as well as a broad registry participation are necessary in order to accurately assess the risk patterns in Europe; henceforth reducing hand injuries and their sequelae.
Highlights
Hand injuries are common in sports and associated with high dropout rates and costs
Evidence of risk profiles in sports is mainly based on data from large surveillance programs of the Anglo-American region, including the USA [18, 22, 26], Canada [27] and Australia [28,29,30]
Since there is no evidence-based sports classification available, sport supergroups were defined in the most reasonable way (Table 2)
Summary
Efforts should strive for further risk prevention measures in order to increase safety in sports. This implies knowledge of sports injury risk profiles. The omnipresent risk of injury is still the major drawback for every athlete, in both professional and amateur sports [6] Previous prevention measures, such as rule changes or the introduction of protective. Evidence of risk profiles in sports is mainly based on data from large surveillance programs of the Anglo-American region, including the USA [18, 22, 26], Canada [27] and Australia [28,29,30]. In order to investigate the most common sports injuries of the hand and wrist [21, 31] in a European study population and to contribute to the establishment of sports injury risk profiles, the following epidemiological study, based on data from a major hand trauma centre in northern Germany, was performed
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