Study: Girls at higher risk for overuse injuries in HS sports

6/29/2015

A new study performed by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center shows that when it comes to overuse injuries in high school sports, girls are at a much higher risk than boys.

Overuse injuries include stress fractures, tendonitis and joint pain, and occur when athletes are required to perform the same motion repeatedly.

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatrics. Dr. Thomas Best, a professor in Ohio State's department of family medicine, analyzed 3,000 male and female injury cases over a seven-year period across 20 high school sports such as soccer, volleyball, gymnastics and lacrosse.

Best and his team found the highest rate of overuse injuries occurred in girls track, followed by girls field hockey and girls lacrosse. By contrast, among boys the most overuse injuries occurred among swimmers and divers. Their rate of repetitive motion injuries was pegged at only about a third of what investigators saw among female runners.

"These young people spend more time playing sports both in competition and in practice. So, there's a correlation there between the amount of time that they're playing and the increased incidence of injuries," said Best. 

The participation and intensity of high school athletics has increased over the past decade. According to Best, some high school athletes spend more than 18 hours a week participating in athletics and many participate in multiple sports concurrently.

Best says the lower leg is the most common site of overuse injuries, followed by the knee and then the shoulder. He recommends teen athletes should vary their movement and play more than one sport. He also tells his patients to make rest and nutrition a priority.

"During this point of their lives, this is when girls are developing bones at the greatest rate," Best said. "It's incredibly important that they're getting the proper amounts of calcium and vitamin D."

Overuse injuries represented 7.7 percent of all injuries, ranging from a low of 1.4 percent of all boys' ice hockey injuries to a high of 55.7 percent of all boys' swimming and diving injuries.

Injuries most frequently resulted in time loss of less than 1 week (50 percent), with only 7.6 percent resulting in time loss greater than three weeks.

Among athletes, overuse injuries account for half of all athletic injuries and twice as many visits to sports medicine physicians than acute trauma. These injuries are known to be more prevalent in children ages 13-17.

Overuse injuries Stress fractures Tendonitis Field hockey Lacrosse Track