Burden of Sport Injuries in the European Union - Safety in Sports

31
4 | February 2012
tion of health resources and the provision of health services. Various groups of diseases,
according to major diagnostic categories, should be made comparable, while
integrating data on fatal and nonfatal health outcomes, and putting this information
in relation to general (e.g. socioeconomic) determinants and proximal risk factors.
Desired are measures for the gap between the population's current health status and
an ideal situation in which everyone lives free of disease or injury, disability and
premature death (Lopez et al. 2006).
An appealing measure for this concept is disability-adjusted life years (DALYs),
which extends the concept of potential years of life lost (YLL) due to premature death
by including equivalent years of healthy life lost by poor health or disability (Murray
1996). In the current study it was not possible to derive this measure for sports injuries,
as information about duration and severity of disabilities could not be established.
As pragmatic alternative, estimates for fatalities, hospital admissions, not admitted
emergency treatments, and other medically treated injuries will be derived.
Based on all hospital treatments (admissions and ambulatory treatments) rough estimates
for long-term disabilities will be made.
4.7 Economic burden
Generally, the economic burden of a group of health disorders like injuries comprises
all direct or indirect costs. Direct costs are all financial flows, which are triggered by
the incidences under study and which in principle can be directly observed, that is
the value of all goods, services, and other resources that are consumed with respect
to diagnosis and treatment of sports injury, including restoration of function, as well
as with respect to the provision of other interventions, including costs related to its
side effects or other current and future consequences. In injury cost analysis, direct
costs may comprise both costs related to the injury (e.g. medical treatment) as well as
to the event (e.g. material damage). Indirect (socioeconomic) costs include also other
economic losses, mainly the loss of productivity due to sick-leaves, impairments and
years of live lost (Gold et al. 1996).
For sport injuries, there are no comprehensive and comparable estimates at European
level available. In practice, only the estimated number of days of indoor treatments
can be used as cost indicator. If information about the average costs of a day in hospital
is available, an estimate for the economic burden based on this information is given.