Incidence and magnitude of head acceleration events experienced by female adolescent rugby players across a season of rugby participation
Date
2024-11-20
Type
Conference Contribution - published
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Abstract
Introduction: Rugby union is a popular fast paced collision, which exposes players to repeated head acceleration events (HAE). Despite the popularity of the game there is growing concern for rugby union player safety and ongoing medical problems following a concussion or long-term participation in the game. Research on females and adolescent rugby players is sparse, yet they are a growing cohort wanting to play the game. This study aimed to address the gap in the literature regarding HAE exposure in adolescent female rugby players, which will contribute to age and sex specific mitigation strategies for player welfare in rugby union.
Methods: Forty-two (age 14.6 ± 1.3) female rugby players wore an instrumented mouthguard (HIT IQ Nexus) for all games and contact trainings during the 2022 and 2023 rugby seasons. All HAE above 8 g were recorded by the instrumented mouthguard. All sessions were recorded by video to verify all mouthguard detected HAE. In total 1979 rugby player hours were recorded across the two seasons (1283 player-hours of training, 696 player-hours of matches).
Results: We found 3433 video-verified HAEs. Over half of these events (n=2039) were from direct contact to the head and 644 indirect impacts not associated with head contact. Average (± SD) HAE incidence per game was 3.9 ± 2.6 and per training was 0.3 ± 0.2. Average HAE incidence was significantly higher in games (p <0.01, d = 1.2) compared to trainings. Peak Rotational Acceleration was significantly higher (p <0.01, d = 0.10) in games (1735 ± 1549 rads/s2) compared to trainings (1586 ± 1284 rads/s2). However Peak Linear Acceleration was not significantly different (p = 0.15, d = 0.06) between games (19 ± 14 g) and trainings (18 ± 12 g).
Conclusions: Adolescent female rugby players are subject to moderately less HAE incidence compared to male counterparts, with HAE occurring predominantly in games. Monitoring HAE magnitude and incidence is important for rugby safety and understanding the effect of concussive and non- over the longer term.
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