Principles of ice hockey injury research

The goal of sports injury research is to improve understanding of injuries in a specific sport in order to facilitate prevention. Comprehension of epidemiology principles is necessary to design research protocols which are both accurate and pragmatic. Common pitfalls in sports epidemiology include selection bias, detection bias, transfer bias, recall bias, susceptibility bias, and confounding. Calculation of an injury rate requires precise measurement of the number of events (numerator) and the population-atrisk (denominator). Viable strategies for determining the incidence and characteristics of injuries and for observing outcome after an intervention in the sport of ice hockey include prospective cohort observational and interventional analyses.