Prevalence and injury profile in Portuguese children and adolescents according to their level of sports participation

BACKGROUND: It is becoming increasingly apparent that sports can present danger in the form of injuries. The extent of this problem calls for preventive actions based on epidemiological research. METHODS: Two questionnaires (LESADO and RAPIL II) were distributed in four schools to 651 subjects aged between 10 and 18 years, involved in different levels of physical activity (PA) - recreative sports, school sports, federated sports and no sports participation (except physical education classes). Bone age was evaluated through Tanner-Whitehouse III method and anthropometric measures according to ISAK. RESULTS: From 247 subjects (37.9%) it was reported a sports injury during the previous six months. The most injured body areas were lower limbs (53.8%), followed by upper limbs (29.0%) and the type of injuries found was strains (33.7%), sprains (27.1%) and fractures (23.1%). The most frequent causes were direct trauma (51.9%), indirect trauma (29.5%) and overuse (12.7%). A high percentage was relapses and chronic injuries (40.9%). The OR for age group >16 years was 2.26 suggesting that those >16 years were 2.26 times more likely to have an injury than the younger subjects and concerning the PAPA level, school and federated sports subjects were 4.21 and 4.44 times more likely to have an injury than no sports participation subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Sports injuries in school age subjects were predominantly minor conditions where sprains and strains were the major injuries. They resulted mostly of trauma situations and lower and upper limbs were the most affected areas. Injury occurrence increased with age and was higher in school and federated athletes.