INJURIES DURING THE 2010 WORLD CUP

On June 1^st,  a nice paper was published by Dvorak and colleagues (2011) describing the incidence of injuries in the 2010 FIFA world cup. Major findings are

• 2 injuries per match. 65% of them were due to contact with another player.
• Injury rate increased with match time being almost 5-times higher at 76-90 min compared with 1-15 min of the match.
• Half of the injuries resulted in absence from sport of 1-3 days, 8% in absence of 4-7 days and 2.7% resulted in absence of 10 days.
• 104 injuries occurred during training (7.9 per 1000 player hours). Most of them were classified as overuse.
• The most frequent diagnosis, for both match and training injuries, was contusion of thigh and lower leg and thigh strain.
• Match injuries incidence was lower compared with previous world cups since 1998 (1998: 2.4, 2002: 2.7, 2006: 2.3 & 2010: 2 injuries per match).

Reference

Dvorak et al. British Journal of Sports Medicine 45:626-630, 2011.