Research and Injury Prevention Scheme

The purpose of this study was to ascertain junior athletes' knowledge about, and attitudes towards voluntarily drinking copious amounts of fluids containing electrolytes and carbohydrates developed by the sports drink manufacturers; compare these data against junior athletes' observed voluntary drinking behaviour and; determine what proportion of junior athletes are in danger of under and/or overdrinking. The consequence of this behaviour is the increased risk of developing exercise associated hyponatremia (EAH); a condition which develops from over drinking and is potentially lethal.

Sixty seven participants, comprising 45 females aged 14.8 years and 22 males aged 14.3 years, were recruited from the Western Region Academy of Sport in NSW across Netball, Basketball and Hockey. The squads completed ~ 5 hours of training which included specific skill drills and small sided games. At each training venue the researchers provided all fluid to be consumed; plain water or commercially available sports drinks, which were available ad libitum.

The analysis concluded that countries that have already devoted greater resources towards sports injury surveillance and prevention through effective national registers (Scandinavia and New Zealand) enjoy a lower nationwide incidence of ACL reconstructions when compared to Australia.

The development of the Sports Safety Policy was split into three segments:
1. Multi-Agency Partnership:
Participants acknowledged a willingness to share resources, knowledge and experience to continue involvement in the policy and guideline development process with NSWSR identified as the most appropriate organisation for networking between all key stakeholders to lead and coordinate the development of the Guidelines
2. Sports Safety Guidelines:
The Guidelines to include information about risk management planning, training opportunities, resources, templates and case studies with the contents to be interactive, simple to understand and practical to use at a community level.
3. A strategic approach to developing, disseminating and implementing the NSW Sports Safety Guidelines

• Future meetings of the Sports Safety Reference Group meetings to include representation from 'end user' groups such as community sports clubs, sports for people with disabilities, schools and local councils;
• The continued development of the Guidelines to include:
  - The priority of safety and risk management processes
  - Development of the rationale highlighting the advantages of the Guidelines
  - Establishment of a scientific sub committee to ensure current and future scientific or best-practice         evidence base on priority safety issues and risk management processes.
  - Establish a means of communication to ensure the content and presentation of the Guidelines
• Clubs can share successful stories and 'showcase' their safety improvements highlighting the fact that improving safety is 'do-able' for community sports clubs.

The aim of this project was to reduce the potential of sports injuries occurring at community sports clubs by extending the reach of an effective sport safety program (SafeClub) with the development of web-based material and information.

The specific project objectives were to understand the differing needs of potential, current and previous participants with regards to club administration and safety risk management in order to develop a website that met the needs of community sports club administrators with regards to safety risk management and to broaden the availability of safety risk management information and support to clubs in regional and rural areas.

• It has reduced the overall cost of the SafeClub course by reducing face-to-face training hours whilst still allowing staff to provide professional support and advice to potential, past and present participants.
• It is a tool that provides 24 hour access to sports safety and risk management information as well as a variety of related resources and links to other organisations allowing volunteers who may be undertaking the majority of their sports club activities out of hours to access information from one site.
• Clubs can share successful stories and 'showcase' their safety improvements highlighting the fact that improving safety is 'do-able' for community sports clubs.

With the mass participation of the general public in fun runs there has been an increase in the number of individuals presenting with Exertional heatstroke (EHS). The aim of this study was to develop a screening test for athletes at risk of injury from EHS, an illness that has a relative high mortality rate and typically affects young, fit otherwise healthy young men.

EHS is a medical emergency and victims suffer a high rate of morbidity and mortality. The diagnosis is based on an elevated body core temperature (above 40 degrees centigrade) and central nervous system dysfunction. It is a disorder that may lead to lesions in the central nervous system, heart, liver, lungs gastrointestinal tract and bone marrow.

It was thought that athletes at risk of developing heatstroke could be identified with recent studies having identified several possible physiological processes that appear to operate differently in cases of EHS, such as the heat shock response where a stress such as heat leads to the production of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) by the tissues.

Aquatic centers play a vital role in aquatic skill development, recreation and leisure pursuits, sport and healthy active lifestyles within each community. With over 370 swimming pools in metropolitan, regional and rural NSW a need was recognised for the development of an online collection tool to collect and analyse types of injuries, where they occur, the medical treatment required and the rate of injuries occurring in commercial aquatic facilities.

Availability of an online facility has allowed commercial aquatic facilities to assess the likelihood of an injury occurring while taking into account measures being employed to protect public safety.

Following an extensive study of more than 2,000 participants in both Australia and Norway researchers concluded that simply, stretching before and after exercise does not reduce the overall risk of injury, although it does reduce soreness and risk of injury to muscles, tendons and ligaments.

Links to the document

The aim of this study was to identify the relationship between ground hardness and injury incidence in community level Australian football.

Patellar tendinopathy is a insidious knee injury with a high prevalence in sports involving repetitive vertical jumping together with high speed and power demands, such as volleyball, basketball and soccer. This study aimed to characterise an athlete’s landing technique and how patellar tendon loading changed when asymptomatic healthy athletes landed using a stop-jump movement (SJ), and how these biomechanical factors were moderated by fatigue.

This project aimed to explore the perceived barriers, potential motivators and enablers to the development of a sports injury prevention policy for NSW, and to provide the necessary background to advocate for, and promote, future policy development and implementation.

The aim of the study was to gain a better understand of the effect of external ankle support on ankle and the knee joint loading leading to better prevention and rehabilitation strategies in netball or any fast paced sports in general.

The Research team hypothesised that external ankle support would reduce the range of motion and would increase the loading on the knee joint during sidestepping and single leg landing compared to commonly worn footwear in netball players.

Three shoe types were selected for the study:

• A standard netball shoe
• A hybrid netball/running shoe
• A high top basketball shoe

• The ankle eversion/inversion range of motion is restricted when wearing a brace inside the standard netball shoe during single leg landing but not during side stepping.
• the ankle eversion was restricted when wearing a brace but not when wearing the high top shoe during landing and side stepping
• Loading at the ankle and knee was not influenced by bracing or high top shoes during single leg landing or sidestepping, except for an increase in plantar flexor movent when performing sidestepping in standard netball shoes with braces.

Lay Summary from University of Sydney

The aim of the 2007 project was to identify risk factors for lower limb injury in team sport athletes. A unique feature of the study was that it pooled data from multiple teams and two sports in an attempt to identify risk factors for a range of lower limb injuries on the premise that there may be common risk factors for a number of types of injuries.

Until recently, musculoskeletal screening at the New South Wales Institute of Sport has been a work in progress. Medical staff and screening processes have been evolving, without a particularly strong concept of the potential for injury prevention.

Data existed from a range of sports doctors and physiotherapists and was often sports specific. Moreover, with changes in staff, the nature of data collected during musculoskeletal screening may have changed from year to year. Records varied within and between professionals.

Through NSW Sporting Injuries funding, 1,362 existing musculo-skeletal data records of NSWIS scholarship athletes across nine sports were compiled. After review the records from a sub-set of sports across the 2002-2007 scholarship years was included in the final analysis.

The analysis identified sports with an increased rate of injury and also injuries that were more common in the sports analysed.

This study provides a profile of the differing patterns of injury presenting to three different clinical settings.

Childhood sporting experiences provide a milieu of benefits, but can also carry injury risks. While the vunerability of the developing skeleton can increase injury risk, it is unreasonable to believe that injuries in sport are all growth-related. Paediatric sports injury surveillance helps to identify future directions for injury prevention in children's sport.

The report provides an overview of hospitalitsations and deaths due to sport and leisure activities in NSW to help guide policy development and priority setting in this state. During 2000-2002 there was a total of 167 sport/ leisure deaths in NSW, corresponding to a rate of 0.85 deaths per 100,000 population during the three year period. The death rate for males was almost 4 times higher than in females. Those aged 15-24 years had the highest age-specific rate of death in sport and those aged over 35 years had the highest age-specific rate of death in leisure activities. During 2003-2004, there was a total of 25,346 sport/ leisure related hospitalisations corresponding to a rate of 190.3 hospitalised injuries per 100,000 population during the two year period with males three times more likely to be hospitalised than females. The report also provides the top 10 sports associated with hospitalisations and deaths in NSW.

This report provides:

Major recommendations included the excess rate of sport/ leisure injury in remote areas needs consideration and that sport/ leisure injury rates should continue to be monitored across social/ demographic groups.

In Australia and NZ, hospitalisation data are coded according to the Australian modification of ICD-10 which is unique by having over 200 activity codes identifying sport/ leisure activities as well as place of occurrence of injury code. This study suggests that knowledge of the activity alone (through ICD-10) can identify most relevant injury hospitalisation data relating to sport/ leisure activities although it is acknowledged that information about place can inform prevention efforts.