You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Review
Prevalence of laceration injuries in professional and amateur rugby union: a systematic review and meta-analysis
  1. Bodil Yucki Oudshoorn1,
  2. Heather Driscoll2,
  3. Karen Kilner3,
  4. Marcus Dunn1,
  5. David James1
  1. 1 Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
  2. 2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Facultyof Science & Engineering, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
  3. 3 Centre for Health and Social Care Research, Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
  1. Correspondence to Bodil Yucki Oudshoorn; %E2%80%83%E2%80%83b.oudshoorn{at}shu.ac.uk

Abstract

Background Studded footwear can cause severe lacerations in rugby union; the prevalence of these injuries is currently unknown.

Objective To summarise the skin and laceration injury prevalence in published epidemiological studies and to investigate any differences in skin injury risk between amateur and professional players.

Design Systematic literature review and meta-analysis of epidemiological studies.

Data sources PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and Ovid.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Prospective, epidemiological studies published in English after 1995, measuring a minimum of 400 match or 900 training exposure hours. Participants should be adult rugby union players (amateur or professional). The study should report a separate skin or laceration injury category and provide sufficient detail to calculate injury prevalence within this category.

Results Twelve studies were included. Mean skin injury prevalence during matches was 2.4 injuries per 1000 exposure hours; during training sessions, the prevalence was 0.06 injuries per 1000 exposure hours. Skin injuries accounted for 5.3% of match injuries and 1.7% of training injuries. Skin injury risk was similar for amateur compared with professional players during matches (OR: 0.63, p=0.46.), but higher during training sessions (OR: 9.24, p=0.02).

Conclusions The skin injury prevalence of 2.4 injuries per 1000 exposure hours is equivalent to one time-loss injury sustained during matches per team, per season. Amateur players are more likely to sustain skin injuries during training sessions than professional players. There is a need for more studies observing injuries among amateur players.

Trial registration number PROSPERO CRD42015024027.

  • Epidemiology
  • Injury
  • Rugby
  • Dermatology
  • Review

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2017-000239

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors BYO designed the study, collected the data, organised the data, performed the statistical analysis and drafted and revised the paper. She is guarantor. HFD and DJ monitored the data collection and data analysis and revised the draft paper. KK selected the statistical methods and revised the draft paper. MD revised the draft paper.

    • Funding This project was internally funded.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.