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

10 EU IDB results on injuries in team-ball-sports
10.1 General results
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10 | February 2012
The project “Safety in sports” focuses in particular at team ball sports which has been
identified as “high risk sports” due to high frequency of injuries in relation to the
time of activity. All types of team ball sports together count for 43% of all sport injuries
in the EU (table/figure 20). Football, which is by far the most popular team ball
sport, has by far the biggest share also of the injuries. For the most common teamball-sports
(football, handball, basketball, volleyball, rugby, and field-hockey) inventories
of prevention measures has been produced as specific deliverables of the “Safety
in Sports” project (Henke & Luig 2010, Luig & Henke 2010, Steinwender 2010a,
2010b, 2010c, 2010d, 2010e). In order to complement these inventories additional
analyses of the injury patterns have been carried out. For this analysis the data of
nine countries could be used (AT, CY, DE, DK, FR, MT, NL, LV, SE) while the data
from two countries (PT, SI) does not differentiate between sports. Table/figure 20
shows the percentage of team ball sports in all sports injuries for these nine countries
jointly. Although this sample of countries cannot be considered as representative for
the entire EU of 27 member states in statistical terms, the results can be taken as the
currently best available estimates. When, in the future, the IDB injury monitoring
system will be implemented in additional countries the accuracy and validity of the
estimates given will improve.