Epidemiology of Meniscal Injuries in U.S. High School Athletes from 2007/08 – 2012/13

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc
• Personal Author:
  Mitchell, Joshua ; Graham, William ; Best, Thomas M. ; Collins, Christy ; Currie, Dustin W. ; Comstock, R. Dawn ; Flanigan, David C.
• Description:
  Purpose ; Knowledge of epidemiologic trends of meniscal injuries in young active populations is limited. Better awareness of injury patterns is a first step to lowering injury rates. Our hypothesis was that meniscal injuries in high school athletes would vary by gender, sport, and type of exposure. ; Methods ; During 2007–2013, a large nationally disperse sample of US high schools reported athlete exposure and injury data for 22 sports by having certified athletic trainers complete an internet-based data collection tool. ; Results ; 1,082 meniscal injuries were reported during 21,088,365 athlete-exposures for an overall injury rate of 5.1 per 100,000 athlete exposures. The overall rate of injury was higher in competition (11.9) than practice (2.7) (RR = 4.4; 95% CI, 3.9–5.0), and 12/19 sports showed significantly higher injury rates in competition compared to practice. Of all injuries, 68.0% occurred in boys, yet among the gender-comparable sports of soccer, basketball, track and field, lacrosse, and baseball/softball injury rates were higher for girls than boys (5.5 and 2.5, respectively, RR = 2.2; 95% CI, 1.8–2.7). Contact injury represented the most common mechanism (55.9%). Surgery was performed for the majority of injuries (63.8%), and 54.0% of athletes had associated intra-articular knee pathology. ; Conclusions ; Meniscal injury patterns among high school athletes vary by gender, sport, and type of exposure. Overall rates are higher for boys, but this is driven by football; however in gender-comparable sports girls may be at higher risk for meniscal injury. Our study is clinically relevant because recognition of distinct differences in these injury patterns will help drive evidence-based, targeted injury prevention strategies and efforts. ; Level of Evidence ; Level III
• Subjects:
  • Adolescent
  • Athletic Injuries
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Menisci, Tibial
  • Schools
  • Sex Distribution
  • Tibial Meniscus Injuries
• Source:
  Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc. 24(3):715-722.
• Pubmed ID:
  26506845
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC5189670
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  R49 CE000674/CE/NCIPC CDC HHS/United States ; R49/CE000674-01/CE/NCIPC CDC HHS/United States ; R49 CE001172/CE/NCIPC CDC HHS/United States ; KL2 RR025754/RR/NCRR NIH HHS/United States ; R49/CE001172-01/CE/NCIPC CDC HHS/United States
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Volume:
  24
• Issue:
  3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/43408/cdc_43408_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 316.10 KB]
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:005c94b17a30921b9c725295865c2b486558fd5d818fd522e111fe3f4064554d