Epidemiology and prevention of sports injuries

Abstract Although sports injuries in children are common, prevention of these injuries is paramount. In order to set out effective prevention programmes, epidemiological studies need to be conducted on incidence, severity, and aetiology of sports injuries. Furthermore, the effectiveness of a preventive measure must be assessed, and the eventual implementation of a programme closely evaluated. When conducting epidemiological studies in sports injuries the injury definition used can have a large impact on the outcome, especially as the aetiology of sports injuries is highly multi-causal and recursive. In addition to distinguishing between ‘sports injury’, ‘sports injury incidence’ and ‘sports participation’, the severity of the injury must be defined by taking six indices into consideration: nature of sports injuries, duration and nature of treatment, sports time loss, working/school time loss, permanent damage, and costs of sports injuries.