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Original research
Orthopaedic and brain injuries over last 10 seasons in the National Football League (NFL): number and effect on missed playing time
  1. Suril B Sheth1,
  2. Dharun Anandayuvaraj2,
  3. Saumil S Patel3,
  4. Bhavin R Sheth2
  1. 1University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
  2. 2Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
  3. 3Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Bhavin R Sheth; brsheth{at}uh.edu

Abstract

Objective To examine trends in number and seriousness of major injuries in the National Football League (NFL) over seasons 2010–2019 and the effect of rule changes to injuries to the leg, back, arm and head.

Methods We calculated, from publicly available weekly injury reports, the number of players that were injured and playing time missed, that is, the number of weeks on average that an injured player had to sit out, as a function of injury to a specific body part. Using classical time series analysis techniques, we fitted injury data with linear and non-linear functions.

Results The number of major injuries to the leg, back, arm and head has not declined over the last 10 years. During this time period, time missed because of injuries to the head has shown a significantly increasing trend. Rule changes designed specifically to protect arm or head have, respectively, succeeded in shortening the time that the injured player misses, but the impact lasts only over a single season.

Conclusions Overall, our data support the argument that new, well-intentioned rules adopted every season by the NFL have been proven to be too weak to make the NFL game safer. Broad-based management of brain and orthopaedic injuries and adoption of preventative measures to reduce the number of players injured and the seriousness of their injuries are required in the modern NFL.

  • American football
  • concussion
  • contact sports
  • injuries
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2019-000684

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    Footnotes

    • SBS and DA are joint first authors.

    • Contributors SBS: study concept, study planning, data collection, data interpretation, manuscript (first draft), manuscript editing. DA: data collection, data interpretation, manuscript editing. SSS: study planning, data analysis, data interpretation, manuscript (first draft) manuscript editing. BRS: responsible for the overall content as guarantor, data analysis including statistical analysis, data interpretation, manuscript editing.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval Data used for the study are in the public domain. All authors have been certified by the IRBs of UH and/or BCM.

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

    • Data availability statement Data are available in a public, open access repository. All data used for our analysis are available from publicly available websites, which have been cited in the article.