Injury Surveillance in Professional Mexican Footballers: A Brief Exploratory Study

Abstract

Objectives: Injuries of professional football players have been the subject of numerous studies from the most competitive countries in the world. One might simply say that ‘football is football’ and assume that the injury profile and rates reported in Europe apply everywhere. However, its necessary a specifics injury registry for Mexican professional teams that improve the lesions incidence monitoring. Methods: A descriptive and exploratory study was conducted on a professional football club for injury surveillance with previous authorization of informed consent. A medical questionnaire was constituted from injury data during training and match times. Results: A total of 13 injuries occurred to 13/26 players that were included in the study. Four of which were training injuries and nine were match injuries. The monitoring was during 59 training sessions and 17 matches, which corresponds to a rate of injuries of 1.77/1000 training hours, 32.1/1000 match hours, and 5.11/1000 soccer hours. The play position of the soccer player incremented the risk injuries (p = 0.020) and the type of injury was correlated with the contact (p = 0.000). Conclusions: This study represents the first epidemiological investigation on soccer injuries in Mexico. The match injury rate was consistent with the literature; however, we found a low training injury rate that must be documented. The play positions of midfield and forward increased the risk of injuries by three times, and the contact was likewise responsible for injuries with significant results.