Physical Activity Related Injury Profile in Children and Adolescents According to Their Maturation – Epidemiological Study

Abstract

Background and Aims Physical activity (PA) is beneficial, enhancing healthy development. However it is estimated that one third of school-age children that practice sport regularly suffer from a serious injury. These same injuries have specific characteristics with regard to gender, age, and location. Our aim is to demonstrate what are the trends of injury when maturation is accurately quantified. Methods In order to collect information about injury pattern and PA level two questionnaires (LESADO and RAPIL II) were distributed to 761 subjects aged between 10 and 18 years involved in different levels of PA. Tanner-Whitehouse III and PHV methods were used to evaluate maturation. Binary and multinomial logistic regression were used in order to identify some significant predictors of injury and body area distribution and injury type, respectively. Results The significant predictors were age group and PA level. The OR for age group was 1.42 suggesting that those ≥13.5 years were 1.42 times more likely to have an injury. Also the older group is 2.09 times more likely to have a sprain than a fracture and 2.74 times more likely to have strain than a fracture. Concerning the PA level, the leisure and federated sports were 1.48 and 3.11 times more likely to have an injury than sedentary. Discussion Injury occurrence increases with age and is higher in leisure and federated athletes. Injury type differed significantly by age being children ≤ 13,5 years more likely to have traumatic bony injuries and children ≥ 13,5 years overuse injuries, sprains and strains.