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Player-to-player contact causes more concussions than heading in soccer
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Although heading the ball is the activity most commonly associated with concussions in soccer, a recent study suggested that player-to-player contact is the most prevalent cause of concussions in the sport.
“Given the intense focus on sports-related concussions over the past few years, the renewed questioning of the safety of heading in soccer and recent calls for banning heading among players younger than 14 years are understandable,” R. Dawn Comstock, PhD, of the department of epidemiology at the University of Colorado, and colleagues wrote in JAMA. “However, evidence-based, targeted prevention efforts are needed to effectively reduce soccer-related concussions.”
The researchers gathered data from 100 schools in the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study to compare concussion rates in boys’ and girls’ soccer. The study examined data from the 2005 through 2014 school years.
In analyzing 1,393,753 girls’ soccer games and practices, 627 concussions were reported for a rate of 4.5 concussions per 10,000 athletic events. Of 1,592,238 boys’ soccer events analyzed, 442 concussions were reported, resulting in a rate of 2.78 concussions per 10,000 athletic events.
Of the 1,069 combined soccer-related concussions, contact with another player occurred in 68.8% of the events for boys and 51.3% for girls. Heading the ball, however, was the most common soccer-specific activity related to concussions, accounting for 30.6% of the events among boys and 25.3% among girls.
The data also showed that contacting another player was the most common mechanism for injuries in heading-related concussions for boys (78.1%) and girls (61.9%).
Comstock and colleagues said that banning heading is unlikely to prevent athlete-to-athlete contact or associated concussions. However, they suggested that banning heading may serve as a secondary measure to minimize the severity of concussions that do occur.
“It may be more culturally tolerable to the soccer community to attempt to reduce athlete-athlete contact across all phases of play through better enforcement of existing rules, enhanced education of athletes on the rules of the game, and improved coaching of activities such as heading,” the investigators concluded. “We believe that reducing athlete-athlete contact across all phases of play will more effectively prevent concussions, as well as other injuries, than will simply banning heading.” – by David Costill
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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