(Thanks to Bruce Brownlee and others from the Soccer Coach Mailing List for a lot of these links.)
With all this dirty soccer going around, I found a recent study on the
incidence of ACL injuries in soccer (in Norway). In it, some findings were:
--The overall incidence rate of injury was .063 injuries per 1000 game hours.
--Men had a rate of .057 per 1000 game hours.
--Women had a rate of .10 injuries per 1000 game hours.
--Reconstructive surgery was performed on 74.4% of the injured players and
was found necessary for return to a high level of play.
--Half of the injured players returned to soccer.
--Men at high level of play had the highest return rate (88.9%), and men
over age 34 had the poorest return rate (22.9%).
--The average annual exposure time was 32.8 game hours per player.
--In men, 62.5% of these injuries were to the right knee.
--The mean age at the time of the injury was 19.0 for women and 26.5 for men.
--69.3% of the injuries happened to an offensive player and 56.8% of the
injuries were to the ball possessor.
--46% of the injuries were the result of a tackle. 58.1% of the women were
injured through a tackle with 44% of the tackle injuries from the side and
32% from the front. 42.1% of the men's injuries came from a tackle with
64.3% of the group coming from the side and 14.3% from the front.
--From a sample of 176 ACL injuries that met the criteria for the study,
"Half of the injuries were misdiagnosed and these injured patients were not
admitted to a hospital after the initial clinical evaluation. Within 4
weeks of injury, 77 of the injuries still were not correctly diagnosed. For
24 patients, diagnosis of an injury was verified between 6 and 12 months
after it occurred. There were 12 players who waited for more than 1 year
for surgical verification of injury."
--In the discussion, the authors saw that higher skill levels had a direct
relationship the number of injuries. Since the statistics were completed in
1991, they felt that women would have a higher rate today due to their
increased abilities and participation.
--Two thirds of female soccer-related ACL injuries were incurred by girls
between the ages of 15 and 18.
--The authors mentioned a study where the incidence of ACL injuries in
indoor soccer was 3.5 per 1000 game hours. (Lindenfeld TN, Schmitt DJ,
Hendy MP, et al: Incidence of injury in indoor soccer. [Am J Sports Med 22:
364-371, 1994])
--There did not seem to be a relationship between position played and rate
of injury.
Bjordals JM, Arnoy F, Hannestad B, Strand, T: Epidemiology of Anterior
Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Soccer. Am J Sports Med 25-3: 341-345, 1997.
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