Pediatric youth athletes are at the greatest risk of overuse injuries. Particularly, athletes aged between 15 and 19 years of age tend to be at the greatest risk of stress fractures, with 42.6% of all stress fractures occurring at that age (McLeod et al 2011). Additionally, females are more commonly affected by overuse injuries than males, but research is inconsistent if that is due to the nature of the sports females are involved in or a different factor. In Stracciolini’s study, a closer look at overuse injuries in the pediatric athlete, found that females obtained 23% more overuse injuries but that 46% of that difference could be explained by the sports that females tend to play (Stracciolini 2015). Some additional risk factors that make
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This study, published in 2015 by Jayanthi et al, was a clinical case control study. The researchers surveyed injured athletes aged 7-18 at a selected sports medicine clinic and uninjured counter parts at a respective primary care clinic (when the comparable athletes were receiving their sports physical) about their degree of sports specialization, hours per week spent in their sport, amount of free play versus time in organized exercise, and their Tanner stage (way of measuring maturity). Sports specialization was defined in this study as “year-round intensive training in a single sport at the exclusion of other sports” and athletes could be classified as low, moderate, or high sport specialization based on if the athletes had a main sport, if they quit other sports for that main sport, and if they trained for that sport over 8 months out of the year. The researchers intentionally left out training volumes in rating sports specialization as they were trying to determine if sport specialization was an independent risk factor for overuse injury. Amount of sports training was measured in relation to their age, for example if a nine year old spent more than nine hours per week in an organized sport than they were over the ratio. Finally, the injured athletes could be classified into three categories of injury: acute in which a single event caused the injury, overuse in which there was no traumatic event and the onset was gradual, and serious overuse in which greater than 1 month of rest was required. All results were analyzed using a STATA statistical analysis and descriptive
This study, published in 2015 by Jayanthi et al, was a clinical case control study. The researchers surveyed injured athletes aged 7-18 at a selected sports medicine clinic and uninjured counter parts at a respective primary care clinic (when the comparable athletes were receiving their sports physical) about their degree of sports specialization, hours per week spent in their sport, amount of free play versus time in organized exercise, and their Tanner stage (way of measuring maturity). Sports specialization was defined in this study as “year-round intensive training in a single sport at the exclusion of other sports” and athletes could be classified as low, moderate, or high sport specialization based on if the athletes had a main sport, if they quit other sports for that main sport, and if they trained for that sport over 8 months out of the year. The researchers intentionally left out training volumes in rating sports specialization as they were trying to determine if sport specialization was an independent risk factor for overuse injury. Amount of sports training was measured in relation to their age, for example if a nine year old spent more than nine hours per week in an organized sport than they were over the ratio. Finally, the injured athletes could be classified into three categories of injury: acute in which a single event caused the injury, overuse in which there was no traumatic event and the onset was gradual, and serious overuse in which greater than 1 month of rest was required. All results were analyzed using a STATA statistical analysis and descriptive