Prospective surveillance of injury in athletics. A pilot study

Purposes. - To determine the feasibility of performing prospective injury surveillance in athletics, and to determine the frequency and type of musculoskeletal injury in athletics during one season. Methods. - A prospective collection of occurrence of injuries during an athletic season (9 months) was performed on 1186 athletes from two athletic clubs. Characteristics of injures and of the injured athlete was collected by physicians. Results. - During the 9 months, among the 1186 athletes, 33 injuries were recorded, a rate injury of 3.7% athletes per year. The injuries were located on the lower limb (100%), caused by overuse (55%), most often triggered by training (91%), and duration of sports time-loss was more than 1 month (36%). Conclusion. - The main results of this study concerning injuries were in agreement with those of literature. On the feasibility of a prospective study in athletics, the limitations of this study reported on the difficulty of establishing this type of study in this individual sport. Other epidemiological studies are needed to improve the injuries knowledge in athletics, particularly to understand risk factors, etiologies and injury mechanisms, with the aim of athletics injury prevention. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.