Epidemiology of Figure Skating Injuries: A Review of the Literature

[Sylvia]

Starting a new thread here in GSD by copying over 3 posts by @Cutting the Ice in a TC thread - link to the article abstract (2018 Nov./Dec.):

Epidemiology of Figure Skating Injuries: A Review of the Literature - PubMed

The predominance of overuse injuries in singles disciplines reflects their increasing technical difficulty, with more difficult jumps and longer training hours. Partner disciplines are more likely to involve acute injuries and upper extremity injuries due to high-risk throws and lifts. Emphasis...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I took a very quick look at the literature cited in PubMed (free to everybody). There were a few articles but this one interested me and points out the need to control repetitive training in young athletes. We can only wish that the figure skater who amazes us at 14 or 15, can continue to skate and improve in the sport rather than being side-lined or forced to retire because of injuries. Abstract below -

Epidemiology of Figure Skating Injuries: A Review of the Literature.
Sports Health. 2018 Nov/Dec;10(6):532-537.
Han JS, Geminiani ET, Micheli LJ
CONTEXT:: As the popularity and technical demands of figure skating increase, so will the number of athletes presenting with sport-related problems.
EVIDENCE ACQUISITION:: Searches were performed across PubMed from 1980 to 2017.
The keywords searched were skating, skaters, incidence, and injuries. The search was limited to English-language articles and human participants. Relevant articles were cross-referenced.
STUDY DESIGN:: Clinical review.
LEVEL OF EVIDENCE:: Level 5.

RESULTS: Previous studies suggest an increase in incidence of figure skating injuries from 1982 to 2003. When combining all disciplines of figure skating, there is a similar proportion of acute and overuse injuries. Within disciplines, overuse injuries appear to be more common in singles skating, while acute injuries are more common in pairs skating, ice dancing, and synchronized skating.

Lower extremity injuries are more common than upper extremity injuries in all disciplines, and pairs skating accounts for the majority of upper extremity injuries. Ankle sprains are the most common skating injury, and patellar tendinitis is the most common overuse injury across all disciplines. Stress fractures are the most common overuse injury in female singles skaters.

CONCLUSION: The predominance of overuse injuries in singles disciplines reflects their increasing technical difficulty, with more difficult jumps and longer training hours. Partner disciplines are more likely to involve acute injuries and upper extremity injuries due to high-risk throws and lifts. Emphasis should be placed on properly fitting skating boots, intrinsic foot and ankle strengthening, and lower extremity flexibility, which may prevent many of the common lower extremity and back injuries in figure skating.

The article indicates that they undertook the study because previous older studies found injuries were increasing. This study was to include more recent literature. So not sure of your point but this study didn’t compare quad training to triple training but looked a type of injuries. WRT concussions, that could be included in acute injuries. I will need to see if I can download the entire article as a word limited abstract can’t include everything in the article.

I was able to download the entire article - tons of very interesting information on prevalence and incidence of various injuries - divided by discipline. It is not a systematic review of the literature so no compiled data. WRT head injuries (which includes concussions, contusions and lacerations), 3 quoted studies found an incidence of 2.9%, 9.8% and 15.3% with pairs and ice dancers reporting more than singles skaters. If there is interest, I can quote the different types of musculoskeletal injuries in singles skaters (not divided by male / female or by age).

The authors report the weaknesses in the studies included in this paper - in particular most studies are retrospective and so there may be inaccurate reporting and recall bias. However, they do conclude that a) not enough studies published b) injuries are increasing and they speculate that this is due to more quad jumps in singles skating, quad throws in pairs, repetitive triple jumps and longer hours spent training. These are all things speculated often by posters here - and again, points out the need for more well-designed prospective studies that can more accurately determine injury risk and - obviously - how to mitigate those risks.

 

[Sylvia]

Many thanks to the person who kindly sent me an open access version of this paper: https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/6204632