Sports injuries: incidence, causes, prevention

Abstract

Physical therapists have an important role to play in the prevention of sports injuries. The process is effectively one of risk management and should be based on a proper risk analysis. Many older studies give a misleading impression of the incidence and consequences of different sports injuries, due to poor study design and the use of an inadequate definition of sports injury: this should always be formulated from the perspective of the athlete who suffers the injury. Older studies on the causes of sports injuries were also often poorly designed and misconceptions concerning injury risk factors are common. For example, there is little hard evidence that poor flexibility and hamstring-quad muscle imbalance are significant sports-injury risk factors. Analysis of the literature on the causes of sports injuries suggests that individual sub-groups of the athletic population may have unique and distinctive risk profiles. There is a need to investigate this proposition using high-quality, empirical research.