Sport- and recreation- related nonfatal injuries treated at the emergency department of mirano (venice, italy) in the year 2002

Introduction

Epidemiological surveillance of sport- and recreation-related injuries is essential to identify the risk factors and to develop prevention strategies. Despite limitations [1] emergency departments are crucial to furnish raw data.

Methods

In 2002 data on nonfatal sport- and recreation-related injuries consecutively treated in the Emergency Department of the USSL 13 (Mirano, Venice, Italy) were collected and analysed. A set of 12 parameters was collected for each patient (in total 520 subjects, 444 males and 76 females aged 7-77 years old) and the injury type was defined on the basis of a simplification of the 1997 International Classification of Disease IDC-9-CM.

Results

Males are more prone to injuries than females (85.4% vs. 14.6%) due to their higher involvement in risky activities such as soccer and rugby football and to the lower participation of females in sporting activities. For both genders the ages in risk appeared to be 13-14 and 27 years old. Injuries reached their peak in October and April (when championships reopen and finish) and during week-ends. The hours at risk were 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. The most used Triage Urgency Code was the lowest (89.6% of the cases). The average prognosis was 8.5 days, but 36.7% of the sample was discharged from hospital soon after medication. Accidents occurred mainly in soccer (51.3%) and rugby players (14.3%) but, taking into account the card-carrying members, rugby appears to be the most traumatizing sporting activity of all. The lower limb was more involved in injuries than the upper limb (38.% vs. 35.5% of the cases).

Discussion / Conclusions

Data reported here are only cross-sectional as it was not always possible to compare the number and type of traumas with the effective number of participants in each sporting activity, due to the lack of data on the number of participants involved in. The further steps of the present observational study will be as follows. a) To collect data on exposition and on the frequency of participation in each sporting activity of the area, in order to compare risk factors among different sporting activities according to the criteria age and sex. b) To force federations to collect and furnish sensible and reliable data on sport participants. c) To design an appropriate questionnaire to be administered to all patients accepted at the emergency unit whose injuries are sport- or recreation-related.

References

[1]. Various authors (2002). MMWR. Morb Mortal Wkly Report, 5(33), 736-740.