Differences in Overuse Injuries in Gender-Comparable Sports: A Nationally Representative Sample of High School Athletes.

Abstract

Context: Participation in high school sports has physical, physiological, and social development benefits, while also increasing the risk of acute and overuse injuries. Risk of sport-related overuse injury differs between boys and girls.

Objective: To investigate differences in overuse injuries among US high school athletes participating in the gender-comparable sports of soccer, basketball, and baseball/softball.

Design: Descriptive epidemiology study using a nationally representative sample from the High School Reporting Information Online (RIO) database.

Setting: High schools.

Patients or other participants: Athletes with overuse injuries during the 2006-2007 through 2018-2019 academic years.

Main outcome measure(s): National estimates and rates of overuse injuries were extrapolated from weighted observed numbers with the following independent variables: sport, gender, academic year, class year, event type, body site, diagnosis, recurrence, activity, and position.

Results: Among an estimated 908 295 overuse injuries nationally, 43.9% (n = 398 419) occurred in boys' soccer, basketball, and baseball, whereas 56.1% (n = 509 876) occurred in girls' soccer, basketball, and softball. When comparing gender across sports, girls were more likely to sustain an overuse injury than boys (soccer, injury rate ratio [IRR]: 1.37, 95% CI = 1.20-1.57; basketball, IRR: 1.82, 95% CI = 1.56-2.14; baseball/softball, IRR: 1.21, 95% CI = 1.04-1.41). Most overuse injuries in soccer and basketball for both genders occurred to a lower extremity (soccer: 83.9% [175 369/209 071] for boys, 90.0% [243 879/271 092] for girls; basketball: 77.0% [59 239/76 884] for boys, 80.5% [81 826/101 709] for girls), whereas most overuse injuries in baseball and softball were to an upper extremity (72.5% [81 363/112 213] for boys, 53.7% [73 557/136 990] for girls). For boys' baseball, pitching (43.5% [47 007/107 984]) was the most common activity associated with an overuse injury, which differed from the most common activity of throwing (31.7% [39 921/126 104]) for girls' softball.

Conclusions: Gender differences observed in this study can help guide future strategies that are more specific to gender and sport to reduce overuse injuries among high school athletes.