Sports injuries in athletes with disabilities

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the type and localization of sports injuries in people with disabilities who play sports professionally or recreationally and to examine whether there was a difference in sports injuries between these two categories of para-athletes. The research sample consisted of 30 men with an average age of 40.96 years. The sample had two subsamples. The first group consisted of 13 respondents who participated in para-sports professionally. The second group comprised of 17 respondents who take part in para-sports recreationally. The respondents trained individual and team para-sports (parashooting, parataekwondo, paraswimming, paracycling, para-athletics, para-table tennis, sitting volleyball and wheelchair basketball). A questionnaire was created to gather overall demographic data, and a part of the Musculoskeletal Discomfort Form was used to localize musculoskeletal complaints. Descriptive statistics, measures of central tendency, the Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were applied. The results showed that 76.6% of all para-athletes have suffered at least one injury, with most injuries occurring during training (63.3%). Shoulder trauma and soft tissue injuries were the most common. Both subsamples reported that they had experienced the most problems in the form of pain, discomfort and numbness in the neck and lower back. As far as people with disabilities are concerned, participation in para-sports carries inseparable and associated risks. Therefore, the data achieved in this study can be used in order to understand the risk factors leading to injury which are specific to para-athletes (disability-sport) and to develop injury prevention programs.