Examples of what Supreme Court majority (direct quotes from paper) were and what theoretical minority opinions might have been for the IOC consensus statement on methods for recording and reporting of epidemiological data on injury and illness in sport1
| Concept | Majority opinion | Minority opinion |
| Time to recurrence | “Time to recurrence or exacerbation should be recorded in days (see ‘Severity of health problems’ section).” | The most appropriate measure for time to recurrence is necessarily dependent on the research question and the available data. We encourage authors to always report time related to “time at risk” (which might be days, or games depending on the sport), and to also report other common metrics when appropriate. |
| Multiple injuries | “When one injury event results in more than one injury, the individual diagnoses should be recorded and classified separately. However, for injury incidence and prevalence reporting purposes this will be counted as one injury, and severity should be reported as the severity of the principal (most severe) injury (see below for further explanation).” | Authors need to be clear if they are reporting incidence / prevalence / severity of events (eg, falls) or incidence/prevalence/severity of injuries (eg, knee sprain). If authors are reporting on injuries, then each pathology (ankle sprain, knee contusion) should count as one injury even if they occurred during the same event. If authors are reporting on events leading to injury, then the event leading to both an ankle and knee injury would count as only one event. |
| Fully recovered | “Healed/fully recovered from injury (or illness) is defined as when the athlete is fully available for training and competition (see ‘Severity of health problems’ section).” | The optimal definition for healing is necessarily context dependent. Many athletes return to unrestricted activity but continue to receive treatment. In general, clinicians would not consider these injuries fully recovered. Further, patients with meniscal tears or osteoarthritis may be asymptomatic for months at a time but suffer from recurrent pain / swelling. These contexts illustrate the need for flexibility in reporting that is designed to optimally address the research question being asked, and to ensure we communicate efficiently with other interested stakeholders such as athletes and coaches who may interpret “healed” or “injury” differently than we have traditionally defined them.25 28 Options on how best to record these “events” are beyond the scope of this discussion and are reported elsewhere.26 27 |