What is a Sports Injury?
- Authors: Timpka, Toomas , Jacobsson, Jenny , Bickenbach, Jerome , Finch, Caroline , Ekberg, Joakim , Nordenfelt, Lennart
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Sports Medicine Vol. 44, no. 4 (2014), p. 423-428
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/565900
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Current sports injury reporting systems lack a common conceptual basis. We propose a conceptual foundation as a basis for the recording of health problems associated with participation in sports, based on the notion of impairment used by the World Health Organization. We provide definitions of sports impairment concepts to represent the perspectives of health services, the participants in sports and physical exercise themselves, and sports institutions. For each perspective, the duration of the causative event is used as the norm for separating concepts into those denoting impairment conditions sustained instantly and those developing gradually over time. Regarding sports impairment sustained in isolated events, 'sports injury' denotes the loss of bodily function or structure that is the object of observations in clinical examinations; 'sports trauma' is defined as an immediate sensation of pain, discomfort or loss of functioning that is the object of athlete self-evaluations; and 'sports incapacity' is the sidelining of an athlete because of a health evaluation made by a legitimate sports authority that is the object of time loss observations. Correspondingly, sports impairment caused by excessive bouts of physical exercise is denoted as 'sports disease' (overuse syndrome) when observed by health service professionals during clinical examinations, 'sports illness' when observed by the athlete in self-evaluations, and 'sports sickness' when recorded as time loss from sports participation by a sports body representative. We propose a concerted development effort in this area that takes advantage of concurrent ontology management resources and involves the international sporting community in building terminology systems that have broad relevance.
Meta-narrative analysis of sports injury reporting practices based on the Injury Definitions Concept Framework (IDCF): A review of consensus statements and epidemiological studies in athletics (track and field)
- Authors: Timpka, Toomas , Jacobsson, Jenny , Ekberg, Joakim , Finch, Caroline , Bickenbach, Jerome , Edouard, Pascal , Bargoria, Victor , Branco, Pedro , Alonso, Juan Manuel
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport Vol.18, no.6 (2014), p.643-650
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Objectives Consistency in routines for reporting injury has been a focus of development efforts in sports epidemiology for a long time. To gain an improved understanding of current reporting practices, we applied the Injury Definitions Concept Framework (IDCF) in a review of injury reporting in a subset of the field. Design Meta-narrative review, An analysis of injury definitions reported in consensus statements for different sports and studies of injury epidemiology in athletics (track and field) published in PubMed between 1980 and 2013 was performed. Separate narratives for each of the three reporting contexts in the IDCF were constructed from the data. Results Six consensus statements and 14 studies reporting on athletics injury epidemiology fulfilled the selection criteria. The narratives on sports performance, clinical examination, and athlete self-report contexts were evenly represented in the eligible studies. The sports performance and athlete self-report narratives covered both professional and community athletes as well as training and competition settings. In the clinical examination narrative, data collection by health service professionals was linked to studies of professional athletes at international championships. Conclusions From an application of the IDCF in a review of injury reporting in sports epidemiology we observed a parallel usage of reporting contexts in this field of research. The co-existence of reporting methodologies does not necessarily reflect a problematic situation, but only provided that firm precautions are taken when comparing studies performed in the different contexts.
- Description: C1