Health Info

With Football Come Injuries
Younger players are hurt less often, but more severely

(HealthDay News) -- Although college football players are more likely than high school players to sustain an injury on the field, high school kids apparently are more apt to suffer a serious injury.

High school players had more fractures, concussions, knee injuries and season-ending injuries, researchers found, even though college players were about twice as likely to get injured while playing football.

This study highlights "where the focus should be in terms of prevention," Dr. Cynthia LaBella, medical director of the Institute for Sports Medicine at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago , told HealthDay . LaBella was not involved in the research.

The study, which was published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine , was undertaken because of the lack of a standardized reporting system for high school football injuries, the researchers said. The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) has had a reporting system in place for more than 20 years.

"We set out to replicate the NCAA system at the high school level," R. Dawn Comstock, a primary researcher for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Children's Hospital in Columbus , Ohio , told HealthDay . "That's important because right now, rules, protective equipment and education at the high school level are largely based on information collected on college athletes, and high school athletes are not merely miniature versions of their collegiate counterparts."

Comstock and her colleagues compared injury reports from the NCAA system, called the Injury Surveillance System, as well as a voluntary system for high schools known as the High School Reporting Information Online. Information was included for 100 high schools and 55 colleges.

Based on about 1,900 injury reports submitted to the high school system, the researchers estimated that roughly a half-million football-related injuries occur in an average season at the high school level across the United States . The NCAA system logged more than 3,500 injuries in its database during the same period.

The injury rate for college players was significantly higher, with 8.6 injuries for every 1,000 "athlete-exposures" -- a term that encompassed practices and games. For high school players, the rate was 4.36 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures.

Yet high school players suffered more serious injuries, according to Comstock.

Another study produced a similar finding. That research, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine , found that catastrophic head injuries and brain trauma were far more likely in high school than college football.

The rate of serious head trauma was 0.67 per 100,000 players at the high school level, and 0.21 per 100,000 at the college level.

The reason, theorized study's lead author, Dr. Barry Boden, from the Orthopedic Center in Rockville , Md. , could be that high school players' skulls might be thinner and more susceptible to injury.

Or, "it is also possible because there is less medical coverage at high school games, so that players are not being evaluated properly," Boden told HealthDay .

High school players, he said, should be discouraged from "leading with the head" when tackling. Boden pointed out that 81 percent of catastrophic head injuries occurred during helmet-to-helmet or helmet-to-body collisions.

On the Web

To learn more about preventing sports injuries, visit the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

SOURCES: HealthDay News ; R. Dawn Comstock, Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics, Ohio State University College of Medicine, and primary investigator, Center for Injury Research and Policy and Columbus Children's Research Institute, Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio; Cynthia LaBella, M.D., medical director, Institute for Sports Medicine, Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago; July and August 2007, American Journal of Sports Medicine ; Barry P. Boden, M.D., physician, Orthopedic Center, Rockville, Md., and adjunct associate professor, Uniform Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Md.
Author: Serena Gordon
Publication Date: July 31, 2008
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