Catastrophic pediatric sports injuries
Section snippets
Catastrophic sports injuries
A concern of most parents, some coaches, and the occasional athlete is possible catastrophic injury resulting either directly or indirectly from sports. Most people, however, do not realize that Theodore Roosevelt almost banned American football in the early nineteenth century because of the high football–related death rate or that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) owes part of its early inception to sport-related deaths [1]. Dr. Fredrick Mueller has been compiling a national
Fall sports
Overall, in 1999, fall sports had 23 direct catastrophic injuries, with 21 associated with football, one with cross-country, and one with soccer [3]. There were 5 fatalities; 10 injuries with permanent disabilities, and 8 serious injuries with recovery [3].
During the 18-year period studied, high school fall sports had 478 direct catastrophic injuries with football having 460 (96.2%) [2], [3]. There were 147 indirect fall catastrophic injuries in the 18 years (1982–1999) with 146 fatalities; 112
Winter sports
There were five direct catastrophic injuries during 1999 in winter sports; one in basketball, two in ice hockey, and two in wrestling. Five indirect catastrophic injuries were also noted; all were fatalities were heart related and if male athletes, with four in basketball, and one in ice hockey. College sports had no indirect injuries but had two direct catastrophic injuries in basketball and one in ice hockey. During the 18-year study, there were 92 high school direct catastrophic injuries (7
Spring sports
High school spring sports had seven direct and seven (all fatal) indirect catastrophic injuries in 2000; none occurred in college spring sports [3]. Direct injuries occurred as follows: 2 in baseball and lacrosse and 1 each in track and softball. During the 18-year period, high school spring sports had 91 direct catastrophic injuries with 29 fatalities, 29 nonfatal, and 33 serious [3]. Baseball accounted for 38, track for 46, lacrosse 4, and softball 3. Female athletes accounted for 4 of the 46
Cheerleading
There has been an 18-year collection of data on cheerleading injuries at the high school and college levels [3]. Dramatic increases (over threefold) in the number of injuries have occurred largely due to change from previous cheerleading styles to more gymnastic-type cheerleader skills and expectations. Each group had one fatality but high school cheerleaders had higher serious and nonfatal catastrophic injury rates than college-level cheerleaders. Cheerleaders in college and high school
Eye trauma
Injuries to eyes can be potentially catastrophic resulting in permanent loss of vision. Injuries can result from direct impact to eyes from a ball, bat, or foreign body or collision with another player and can lead to penetrating or blunt injury [18], [19], [20], [21].
Certain symptoms indicate the severity of the injury: loss of vision, photophobia, diplopia, proptosis, irregular pupils, foreign body sensation, sclero-conjunctival injection, hyphema, and halos around lights [19]. The eye should
Sudden death in young athletes
Indirect or nontraumatic deaths in high school and college athletes have been identified to be predominately caused by the following cardiac anomalies: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, coronary artery anomalies, myocarditis, aortic stenosis, aortic rupture, and right ventricular cardiomyopathy (particularly in Europe/Italy) [17]. Dysrhythmias from Ebstein's anomaly with pre-excitation, long QT syndromes, Brugada syndrome, and other pre-excitation syndromes also have been identified but less
Summary
The high school sports of wrestling, gymnastics, ice hockey, baseball, track, and cheerleading should receive closer attention to prevent injury. Safer equipment and sport-specific conditioning should be provided and injuries strictly monitored. Greater attention must also be paid to swimming and diving techniques, and continued observation is needed for heat stroke and heat intolerance in sports such as football, wrestling, basketball, track and field, and cross-country. An increased awareness
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Cited by (38)
Medical perspectives on pediatric sports medicine–Selective topics
2022, Disease-a-MonthThe role of the autopsy in the diagnosis of commotio cordis lethal cases: Review of the literature
2019, Legal MedicineCitation Excerpt :17 articles have been excluded because they were not in English. Among the remaining 294 articles, 33 matched the inclusion criteria and were reviewed (Table 1) [3,7–38]. The 33 articles contained a total of 215 cases.
Wet and wounded: Pediatric facial trauma from swimming and diving
2018, International Journal of Pediatric OtorhinolaryngologyCitation Excerpt :Fractures comprised a similar proportion of injuries for males and females (Table 3). Diving has often been considered a high-risk athletic activity [4,30,31]. However, most research has focused on its association with spinal cord injuries, likely due to their catastrophic effect on quality of life [32–34].
Sports-Related Injury of the Pediatric Spine
2010, Radiologic Clinics of North AmericaCitation Excerpt :The risk of acute spinal injury is increased in sports that involve athlete-to-athlete contact, sports that mechanically increase athlete velocity, and sports that involve elevation above the playing surface. Sports at higher risk for acute spine injuries include motor sports, cycling, diving, skiing, football, ice hockey, wrestling, and gymnastics.6–13 The rate of significant spinal injuries in contact sports increases steadily with age and ability level.
Musculoskeletal Injuries in Sports
2006, Primary Care - Clinics in Office PracticeCitation Excerpt :Different definitions include one or more of the following elements: time loss from practice or game, decreased level of activity, and need for medical attention [5,6]. Other problems with sport injury data include reliability of the collected data, self-report recall bias, presence or absence of trainer or other qualified personnel at the site to record the injuries, difficulty in defining the population at risk (the denominator), and insufficient information on actual exposure time [3–8]. Injuries are further categorized as acute (macrotrauma) or chronic or overuse (microtrauma).
Pediatric Diving-Related Injuries in Swimming Pools Presenting to US Emergency Departments: 2008-2020
2023, Pediatric Emergency Care