Sports Injury, Anatomy and Psychology, Physical Activities

A controlled cross-sectional study was performed to investigate whether
regular sports activity in the form of playing tennis has an effect on the
bone density of the lumbar spine and the neck of the femur. Bone density
was measured by the DXA method (Dual X-Ray Absorptiometry).
The study sample consisted og 80 men ages 41 to 60 years. Half of these
played no sports, while the other half played leisure tennis on an average
of 6.50 (± 2.94) hours per week. The two groups were compared
using one- and two-factorial covariance analyses. In control of the quality
criteria, a significant correlation was found between bone density
of the neck of the femur and the body height, respectively weight. It was
evident from the results that the tennis players had significantly higher
bone density in the measured variables than the non-players. Multiple
paired comparison brought the same results. Age played overall a slight
role. The findings emphasize the positive effect of sports activities in
which these men participated.

This study investigated the attitudes and perceptions of physiotherapists working in professional soccer toward sport psychology intervention in injury rehabilitation. The Physiotherapist and Sport Psychology Questionnaire (Hemmings & Povey, 2002) was distributed to all professional soccer clubs in England and Wales. Thirty-nine of the questionnaires were returned fully completed. In addition to this, 10 of the 39 respondents participated in semi-structured interviews designed to further examine attitudes and perceptions in this area. It was found that the physiotherapists believed that negative psychological reactions to sports injury were fairly commonplace, with stress/anxiety being the most commonly cited reaction. Fifty-one percent of the physiotherapists reported having referred an athlete to a sport psychologist. The stigma associated with consulting a psychologist was found to be a barrier to referral. It was suggested that more education as to the role of sport psychology in injury rehabilitation is required, along with the development of a sport psychology referral network.

Objective: Previous researches on sports injuries primarily focused on specific games or sports or on specific types of injuries. None of them had tried to explore the injury patterns of games and sports altogether. The current study tried to explore the injury patterns of sportspersons over 16 different types of games and sports. Materials and methods: Total of 1008 injury cases (649 male and 369 female, age 21.07±2.78 and 20.81± 3.01 years) between the academic sessions 2008 to 2017 were analysed. Injury data were extracted from the institute injury record book. Apart from age and gender, ' Body site of injury ', ' Types of injury ' and ' Recurring of injury ' were selected as variables for the study. Descriptive statistics, bar and pie diagram were generated using crosstabs function of IBM SPSS. Results: An average 101.80±12.59 injury was reported per year. Footballers were found to be the highest injured sportsperson (19.5%). Injury percentage of male players (63.75%) was higher compared to female (36.25%) counterparts. Lower limb area (45.28%) was found to be the highest affected body site of injury followed by upper limb area (29.47%). Acute injury constituted 50.39% of overall injuries. Most injuries were non-recurring in nature (63.65%). Further different combinations of analysis revealed more insight of injury patterns of sportspersons.

Depression is common among athletes following sport injury, yet few studies have explored the severity of postinjury depression. Among those studies, only one examined gender differences although women in the general population are more likely than men to experience depression. No research to date has used interviews to assess depression despite their standard use among mental health professionals. In a quasiexperimental design, we used a self-report checklist and a clinical interview to compare depression among male and female athletes at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months postinjury. Results revealed significant effects of group (injured vs. control) and time (since injury), and these effects were different for the two depression measures. We also explored the sensitivity and specificity of the user-rated checklist in identifying severely depressed athletes compared with the interview. Findings underscore the importance of multimodal approaches and clinical judgment when evaluating athletes' postinjury depression symptoms.