Authors: Sorana Baciu, Marius Manole, Alexandru Grecu, Anca Stefania Mesaroș
Affiliation
Department of Aesthetics and Propedeutics, “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca
Abstract
Background. Sports dentistry has become very popular lately as the trend of a healthy life increases. Many families are raising their children from an early age in the spirit of a healthy life, and enroll them in team sports in order for them to practice physical activities on a regular basis. Injuries in different parts of the body are encountered in children practicing team sports and more often occur in ball games.
Aims. The objective of this study was to assess the frequency of occurrence of injuries in a group of children practicing ball games (sports group) in Cluj and to compare them with a control group.
Methods. The questionnaire and documents regarding informed consent were distributed to the 1273 families with children practicing basketball and to 1273 families with children that were not involved in regular sports activities.
Results. Our results were comparable with the results in the literature in regard to distribution related to gender, age, number of days of practice, years of experience, hours of rest, location of injuries in the body. Regarding practice days, a lower incidence (6.48%) was found in the sports group (Sg) for children with under 3 days of practice per week compared to children of the Sg with over 3 days of practice (8.4%). For the injured cases, the length of the period of resting time in training influenced the occurrence, not significantly, but nevertheless higher scores for injuries were encountered (49.11%) when no sufficient resting time was granted (50.89%). Another factor influencing the rate of injuries was the sleep duration, for which in children of the Sg, values ranged between 5.49% – 33.93% and 60.66% for 8-9 hours, 7-8 hours and 6-7 hours of sleep, respectively.
Conclusions. We can state that the results are similar to similar studies in the literature, in regard to gender distribution and injury distribution related to different body parts. We found out that the injury rate increased with age and experience in the basketball group, where lower limbs, followed by upper limbs and head were the most injured parts of the body. Insufficient knee and elbow protections were worn, but nevertheless in a higher proportion of cases than mouth guards.
Key words: ball games, children, injuries, occurrence.
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