Abstract
In the Swiss organization "Youth and Sports" all acute injuries that are attended
to by a physician are registered by the Military Insurance, and data on the number
of participants in 32 sports together with the time of exposure are collected by the
organization. Per year there are close to 350,000 participants (age 14-20 years) during
13.2 million hours causing more than 5,000 injuries. In a descriptive study the data
on the activities in "Youth and Sports" from 1987-1989 have been combined with the
injuries which occurred during the same time period. The exposure to risk per 10,000
hours (incidence rate) has been calculated and is presented as a mean of the three
years. Icehockey, handball and soccer had the highest incidences in males (8.6, 7.2,
and 6.6) followed by wrestling, hiking and basketball (6.3, 3.6, and 3.5). In females
the ranking order was handball, soccer and basketball (7.6, 6.7, and 4.9) succeeded
by alpine skiing, volleyball and alpinism (3.9, 3.8, and 3.0). A comparison between
males and females of the incidence rates in eleven analogous sports showed five significantly
higher rates, four in female sports: basketball, alpine skiing, volleyball and apparatus
gymnastics, and one in a male sport, hiking. The overall rate was significantly higher
in males, but the higher risk was explained by the predominance of male soccer (56
% of the injuries in males). After standardization for total exposure the results
were even reversed and female sports had a higher overall risk.
Key words
Sports injuries - epidemiology - exposure - population-at-risk - time-at-risk - incidence
rates
