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J. Santos1, L. Barboza1, F. Nascimento2, M. Santos3
1Universidade Paranaense - UNIPAR, Physical Therapy, Toledo, Brazil, 2Reab Plus Fisioterapia, Physical Therapy, Toledo, Brazil, 3Universidade do Oeste Paulista - UNOESTE, Physical Therapy, Presidente Prudente, Brazil
Background: Badminton is still a sport of few practitioners in Brazil but that has been gaining more popularity in recent years. Due to the characteristics of this explosive sport, skeletal muscle injuries are common. Research on the prevalence and characteristics of these injuries in young Brazilian players of this modality is extremely limited.
Purpose: To identify the prevalence, location, and characteristics of injuries in young badminton athletes in a Brazilian sample.
Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study carried out with young high-performance athletes (17.8 ± 2.5 years old) of both genders who are members of a Brazilian badminton team (N=10). It was based on the answers to a questionnaire about musculoskeletal injuries suffered in the last semester of sports practice before the research. The respondent athlete could answer about more than one injury suffered in that period. The survey was subdivided into the characterization of the athlete and sports practice (6 questions), characterization of the injury (3 questions), and characterization of the post-injury period (4 questions).
Results: 80% of athletes practiced the sport between 5 and 10 years and the others for more than 10 years with a weekly training period between 10 to 15 hours. One athlete (10%) had not suffered an injury, seven individuals (70%) had at least one injury and the other two participants (20%) suffered two injuries within the given time (total 11 injuries) of which five occurred on the shoulder (45.5%), three on the thigh (27.3%), one on the ankle (9.1%), one on the arm (9.1%), and one on the hip (9.1%). The injuries occurred predominantly during an official competition (72.7%) and in ten cases (90.9%) there was a withdrawal from the sporting activity from 1 to 7 days, in one case (9.1%) the period in which the athlete stayed away from the sport was from 8 to 21 days and in none of the cases the athletes stayed away from the sport for more than 21 days. The athletes were asked if the injuries they suffered were recurrent from previous ones, revealing that 36.4% of them were.
Conclusion(s): The present study suggests that sports injuries are a substantial problem in young badminton players who begin even at the early time of practicing the sport. Shoulder injuries are those that most affect these players followed by those on the thigh. Despite a large number of injuries, the time away from practice is relatively short. There was a moderate number of recurrent injuries in these athletes.
Implications: Strategies to prevent first time injuries and overuse symptoms transforming into injuries should be the focus to decrease the badminton injury in young Brazilian athletes.
Funding, acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank all the participating athletes, PTs, and Universidade Paranaense (UNIPAR) for economic support.
Keywords: injury, Sports, Young athletes
Topic: Sport & sports injuries
Did this work require ethics approval? Yes
Institution: Universidade Paranaense - UNIPAR
Committee: Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa envolvendo Seres Humanos - UNIPAR
Ethics number: 86452
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
