Risk factors for acute injuries and overuse syndromes of the shoulder in amateur triathletes - A retrospective analysis

Dominik Schorn, Tim Vogler, Georg Gosheger, Kristian Schneider, Sebastian Klingebiel, Carolin Rickert, Dimosthenis Andreou and Dennis Liem

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-9

Abstract: Objectives: To investigate the prevalence of shoulder-related acute and overuse injuries in triathletes and examine the role of possible risk factors, in order to identify potential preventive measures. Methods: We performed a retrospective epidemiologic study of 193 amateur triathletes between June and August 2013 and evaluated their competition and training habits, as well as the presence of acute and overuse injuries of the shoulder sustained during the past 12 months. Contingency tables were analyzed using Pearson’s chi-squared test. Normally distributed data were compared with the independent samples t-test, while non-parametric analyses were performed with the Mann-Whitney U test. Binary logistic regression was used to identify important predictors of injuries. Results: 12 participants (6%) sustained acute injuries and 36 athletes experienced an overuse injury. The acute injury rate amounted to 0.11 per 1000 hours of training and the overuse injury rate to 0.33 per 1000 hours of training. There was no association between athletes’ age, height, weight, BMI, a history of shoulder complaints or triathlon experience in years and acute or overuse injuries. Male athletes had a trend for sustaining more acute injuries then female athletes (8% vs. 2%, p = 0.079). Athletes with acute injuries spent a significantly higher amount of time per week doing weight training (p = 0.007) and had a trend for a higher weekly duration of cycling training (p = 0.088). Athletes with overuse injuries participated in a significantly higher number of races compared to athletes without overuse injuries (p = 0.005). The regular use of paddles was associated with a significantly higher rate of overuse injuries (24% vs. 10%, p = 0.014). Conclusion: The regular use of paddles during swimming training appears to be a risk factor for the development of overuse injuries, while an increased duration of weight and cycling training seems to be associated with a higher rate of acute injuries.

Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198168 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 98168&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0198168

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198168

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().