Heat injury in youth sport
- 1Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- 2Department of Exercise and Sport Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- 3Department of Orthopedics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- Correspondence to Dr S W Marshall, CB#7435, Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7435, USA; smarshall{at}unc.edu
- Accepted 30 September 2009
- Published Online First 25 October 2009
Abstract
Heat injury is a potentially lethal condition that is considered to be completely preventable. Fatal heat injury is relatively rare (0.20 per 100 000 player-seasons in US high school football) and there are very limited data on non-fatal incidence. Expert recommendations for prevention include gradual acclimatisation of youth athletes to hot conditions, reductions in activity in hot and humid conditions, wearing light and light-coloured clothing, careful monitoring of athletes for signs of heat injury to facilitate immediate detection, having the resources to immediately and rapidly cool affected athletes, and education of athletes, care givers, and coaches about heat injury. Although a base of observational case data, physiological information, and expert opinion exists, the science surrounding this field is devoid of health communication and health behaviour research, and there is a pressing need for analytical studies to evaluate intervention programmes and/or identify new risk factors. There is also a need for ongoing data collection on heat injury incidence and on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards heat injury among youth athletes, their care givers and their coaches.
Footnotes
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Competing interests None.
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Provenance and Peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
