Because of increasing rates of concussions in women’s soccer and volleyball, researchers say that more attention needs to be paid to the trajectories of the incidences of concussions in the sports.
In the study, “Epidemiology of Concussions in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Sports: 2014,15-2018/19,” the researchers describe the epidemiology of sport-related concussions in 23 National Collegiate Athletic Association sports during the 2014/15 and 2018/2018 academic years.
The findings were published online on December 13, 2021, in The American Journal of Sports Medicine.
“Updated epidemiology studies examining sport-related concussions are critical in evaluating recent efforts aimed at reducing the incidence of sports-related concussions in National Collegiate Athletic Association sports,” the researchers wrote.
For their study, they analyzed sport-related concussion and exposure data in the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program. They looked specifically at injury counts, rates, and proportions, injury mechanism, and injury history.
Overall, the researchers identified 3,497 sport-related concussions from 8,474,400 athlete-exposures that were reported during the study period.
The competition-related sport-related concussion rate was higher than was the practice-related sport-related concussion rate (IRR, 4.12; 95% CI, 3.86-4.41). The highest sport-related concussion rates were observed in men’s ice hockey (7.35 per 10,000 Athlete Exposures) and women’s soccer (7.15 per 10,000 Athlete Exposures); rates in women’s soccer and volleyball increased between 2015/16 and 2018/19.
Concussions in men’s sports were mostly caused by player contact, while equipment/apparatus contact was mostly to blame for concussions in women’s sports.
The researchers observed sex-related difference in soccer, basketball, softball/baseball and swimming and diving. Most sport-related concussion reported in men’s sports (84.3%) and women’s sports (81.1%) were reported as new injuries.
“Given the increasing sport-related rates observed in women’s soccer and volleyball during the latter years of the study, these results indicate the need to direct further attention toward trajectories of sport-related concussion incidence in these sports. The prevalence of equipment/apparatus contact sport-related concussions in women’s sports also suggests that concussion mechanisms in women’s sports warrant further investigation. As most concussions during the study period were reported as new injuries, the prevalence of recurrent sport-related concussion in men’s and women’s ice hockey is also noteworthy,” the researchers wrote.
Study authors included Avinash Chandran, Adrian J. Boltz, Sarah N. Morris, Hannah J. Robison, and Christy L. Collins of the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention in Indianapolis, Indiana. Aliza K. Nedimyer and Johna K. Register-Mihalik of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also contributed to the study.
