Study: 90-fold increase in pickleball-related fractures in past 20 years
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Key takeaways:
- Overall, 87% of players who sustained a facture were aged 60 years or older and 92% of fractures were caused by falls.
- Winter months had more fractures than the other seasons.
SAN FRANCISCO —Pickleball-related fractures have increased 90-fold during the past 20 years, with a doubling seen from 2020 to 2022, according to research presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting.
For the cross-sectional descriptive study, Yasmine S. Ghattas, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, and colleagues used the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a publicly available database from the Consumer Product Safety and Commission, to compare a sample of data from 2002 to 2022 to identify pickleball-related fracture trends, mechanisms of injuries, anatomic locations, gender distributions and disposition status. Researchers identified 377 patients with a total of 397 pickleball-related fractures. Average patient age was 66.4 years, with an age range of 9 to 93 years. Overall, 87% of players who sustained a facture were aged 60 years or older.
Researchers found a 90-fold increase in fractures during the study period, with a surge seen from 2020 to 2022 in which fractures doubled. Ghattas said they only identified one fracture related to pickleball in 2005, but found 91 fractures in 2022, which was “a stark difference” between years.
“Once we did a national weighted average in 2022, that’s about 5,400 national fractures related to pickleball, which is significant, especially for a sport that some may consider anecdotally to be a benign sport. Everything sort of has pros and cons, so it’s just good to know that there’s always a possibility for even severe injury,” Ghattas told Healio.
Overall, 92% of fractures were caused by falls, and 66% of fractures were upper extremity fractures compared with 19% lower extremity fractures. Ghattas said there was a female predominance of fractures at a 2.2:1 ratio for female to male patients.
More patients followed as outpatients (81%) than were admitted to the hospital (19%). Overall, 69% of female patients presented to the ED with fractures compared with 31% of male patients. Despite the female predominance in pickleball-related fractures, researchers found men were 2.3 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital for a fracture, which may be a consequence of the anatomic locations and facture severity, which often included hip, femur and truncal fractures. Researchers also found the winter months had significantly more fractures than the other seasons.
“I think the role of an orthopedic provider in this situation is to just give education and information to their patients and allow them to make an educated choice based on the demographic variables,” Ghattas said.
Kurt P. Spindler, MD, FAAOS, of Cleveland Clinic in Florida and study co-author, said despite the reputation of pickleball as a low-impact sport, it can pose serious risk for players, especially if the players have weaker bones from osteoporosis.
“It’s important to understand your risk profile of injury and to speak with your physician to see how you can lower your risk,” Spindler said in a press release.
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Ghattas YS, et al. Poster e642. Presented at: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting; Feb. 12-16, 2024; San Francisco.
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