New study finds 2.5 million basketball injuries to high school athletes in 6 seasons

Study calls for more access to on-site athletic trainers to properly assess injuries

2014-04-23

(Press-News.org) VIDEO: A new study about injuries to high school basketball players has experts calling for some changes on the sidelines before next season. Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital studied injuries between 2005-2011...
Click here for more information.

Basketball is a popular high school sport in the United States with 1 million participants annually. A recently published study by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital is the first to compare and describe the occurrence and distribution patterns of basketball-related injuries treated in emergency departments and the high school athletic training setting among adolescents and teens.

The study, published online in the Journal of Athletic Training, examined data relating to adolescents 13-19 years of age who were treated in U.S. emergency departments (EDs) from 2005 through 2010 and those treated in the high school athletic training setting during the 2005—2006 through the 2010—2011 academic years for an injury associated with basketball. Nationally, 1,514,957 patients with basketball-related injuries were treated in EDs and 1,064,551 were treated in the athletic training setting.

The study found that in general, injuries that are more easily diagnosed and treated, such as sprains/strains, were more likely to be treated onsite by an athletic trainer while more serious injuries, such as fractures, that require more extensive diagnostic and treatment procedures were more commonly treated in an ED.

"Athletic trainers play a really important role in helping to assess those more mild or moderate injuries and that helps alleviate a burden on the health care system and on families," said Lara McKenzie, PhD, the study's lead author and principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's. "They are right there on the sidelines. They are there when some of these things happen. And they can be a great resource for families to evaluate that injury immediately."

In 1998, the American Medical Association recommended all high school sports programs enlist an athletic medicine unit consisting of a physician director and an athletic trainer, yet as of 2009, the National Athletic Trainers' Association estimated only 42 percent of high school sports teams met this recommendation. With more than half of U.S. high school athletes not having access to an athletic trainer during practice or competition, a vast majority of injured players wind up in urgent care facilities and emergency departments, some unnecessarily.

Dr. McKenzie, also a faculty member at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, said that while athletic trainers cannot treat every injury, they can make the system more efficient by only sending athletes to the hospital when it is necessary and helping athletes return to play when it is safe.

"We are there to prevent injuries, evaluate them quickly, treat them immediately and try our best to make sure that as we return them to play we do it in the most safe and efficient way possible," said Kerry Waple, ATC, certified athletic trainer in Sports Medicine at Nationwide Children's. "There are a lot of injuries that happen that are winding up in urgent cares and emergency departments that don't need to be there."

The Sports Medicine team at Nationwide Children's partners with 13 high schools across central Ohio and provides on-site certified athletic trainers for athletes during both practice and competition. The athletic trainers provide immediate triage, diagnosis and treatment to injured athletes and help them return to play safely and at the right time. In addition, Nationwide Children's Sports Medicine experts provide injury prevention techniques to high school and middle school athletes.

Data for this study were obtained from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which is operated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The NEISS database provides information on consumer product-related and sports- and recreation-related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments across the country. Data for this study were also obtained from the High School Reporting Information Online™ database.

INFORMATION:

The Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) of The Research Institute at Nationwide

Children's Hospital works globally to reduce injury-related pediatric death and disabilities. With innovative research at its core, CIRP works to continually improve the scientific understanding of the epidemiology, biomechanics, prevention, acute treatment and rehabilitation of injuries. CIRP serves as a pioneer by translating cutting edge injury research into education, policy, and advances in clinical care. For related injury prevention materials or to learn more about CIRP, visit http://www.injurycenter.org.

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

New study finds 2.5 million basketball injuries to high school athletes in 6 seasons 2

New study finds 2.5 million basketball injuries to high school athletes in 6 seasons 3

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

WSU researchers tackle 'virtually ignored' psychological study of spite

2014-04-23

PULLMAN, Wash.—Some of the world's nastiest behavior grows out of spite, the dark art of hurting an opponent even when it comes at a price to yourself. Divorcing couples often go out of their way to hurt each other and even their kids, skirting the more peaceful path to moving on. Tax evaders can grow so vengeful over a penalty that they'll double down on their cheating. Terrorists can be so keen to hurt their enemies, they commit suicide in the process. Spitefulness can even elevate a small slight, like lurking in wait for a parking space, into a vengeance worthy transgression. "There ...

Picture books aren't just fun

2014-04-23

Children hear as much sophisticated information about animals when parents read picture book stories about animals as when they read flashcard-type animal vocabulary books, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo. "Marketers tell parents and educators that vocabulary books are more educational, so picture books are often dismissed as being just for fun," said the study's author, Professor Daniela O'Neill. "But our findings show that reading picture books with kids exposes them to information about animals in a way that allows children to readily apply ...

Neuroscientists discover brain circuits involved in emotion

2014-04-23

Neuroscientists have discovered a brain pathway that underlies the emotional behaviours critical for survival. New research by the University of Bristol, published in the Journal of Physiology today [23 April], has identified a chain of neural connections which links central survival circuits to the spinal cord, causing the body to freeze when experiencing fear. Understanding how these central neural pathways work is a fundamental step towards developing effective treatments for emotional disorders such as anxiety, panic attacks and phobias. An important brain region ...

Lower birth weight, less breastfeeding linked to adult inflammation and disease

2014-04-23

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Individuals born at lower birth weights as well as those breastfed less than three months or not at all are more likely as young adults to have higher levels of chronic inflammation that contributes to cardiovascular disease, according to a new Northwestern University study. Based on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Northwestern researchers evaluated how levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a key biomarker of inflammation, linked back to birth weight and breastfeeding duration for nearly 7,000 24- to 32-year-olds. The ...

Cougars' diverse diet helped them survive the Pleistocene mass extinction

2014-04-23

Cougars may have survived the mass extinction that took place about 12,000 years ago because they were not particular about what they ate, unlike their more finicky cousins--the saber-tooth cat and American lion. Both perished along with the woolly mammoth and many of the other supersized mammals that walked the Earth during the late Pleistocene. That is the conclusion of a new analysis of the microscopic wear marks on the teeth of cougars, saber-tooth cats and American lions described in the April 23 issue of the journal Biology Letters. "Before the Late Pleistocene ...

Stillbirth may be associated with both severely restricted and excessive fetal growth

2014-04-23

When several factors are accounted for, stillbirth may be associated with both severely restricted and excessive fetal growth, according to a study by US researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Radek Bukowski and colleagues from the NICHD Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network investigated the fetal growth abnormalities associated with stillbirth using a new approach developed by the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network to estimate gestational age. Using this approach the authors investigated all the stillbirths, and a sample of live births, which ...

Pain curbs sex drive in female mice, but not in males

2014-04-23

"Not tonight, dear, I have a headache." Generally speaking, that line is attributed to the wife in a couple, implying that women's sexual desire is more affected by pain than men's. Now, researchers from McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal have investigated, possibly for the first time in any species, the direct impact of pain on sexual behaviour in mice. Their study, published in the April 23 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, found that pain from inflammation greatly reduced sexual motivation in female mice in heat -- but had no such effect on ...

Getting at the root of the mountain pine beetle's rapid habitat expansion and forest

2014-04-23

The mountain pine beetle has wreaked havoc in North America, across forests from the American Southwest to British Columbia and Alberta, with the potential to spread all the way to the Atlantic coast. Millions of acres of forest have been lost, with severe economic and ecological impacts from a beetle outbreak ten times larger than previous outbreaks. Because of its importance and impact on forestry, the mountain pine beetle's genome has been recently sequenced. Using this new resource, authors Janes, et.al. examined how the pine beetle could undergo such rapid habitat ...

Researchers identify link between fetal growth and risk of stillbirth

2014-04-23

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network have identified a link between stillbirth and either restricted or excessive fetal growth. Findings from the study are online in the April 22 issue of PLOS Medicine. Using a new approach developed by the network to estimate gestational age in stillborn babies, Dr. Radek Bukowski, lead researcher and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UTMB, and his colleagues evaluated 663 stillbirths and 1932 live births that occurred over a two-and-a-half year period at 59 ...

Best practices in communication for the animal world

2014-04-23

Coral Gables, Fla. (April 21, 2014) -- There are all sorts of signaling strategies in nature. Peacocks puff out their feathers and spread their colorful tails; satin bowbirds build specialized stick structures, called bowers, and decorate them with blue and shiny objects; and European bitterling males show off bright nuptial coloration during spawning season. Each species has evolved a unique method to communicate with others. "Signaling can have profound fitness implications for individuals that are either signaling or receiving the signal," says Gavin M. Leighton, ...

Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) launches a second funding opportunity to accelerate novel tool development to advance Parkinson's disease research

New study finds 2.5 million basketball injuries to high school athletes in 6 seasons

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: