1419 - Incidence of Injury in Collegiate Wheelchair Basketball Players By Sex: A Retrospective Surveillance Study

The burden of injury among adaptive athletes may exceed that of non-adaptive athletes. Often, adaptive athletes increasingly rely on their functional extremities to carry out activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (iADLs), which also inherently increases their risk for overuse injury during athletic activities. Out of 32 adaptive sports, wheelchair basketball (WB) had the second highest injury rate. Investigating sex-related differences in injury patterns is crucial, as females may experience unique biomechanical and physiologic challenges that could influence injury risk. This study aimed to evalute sex-related differences in injury rates among collegiate WB players.


Design: A retrospective injury surveillance study among collegiate WB players across three seasons at one university.

Results:

Seventy-five athletes (42 males, 33 females) were included in this study. Females had a significantly higher injury rate (IR) compared to males, with an IR ratio of 2.57 (p = 0.001). No statistically significant differences were observed between sex regarding the injury type (new, reinjury, exacerbation, chronic) (p=0.31) or cause of injury (contact with athlete, contact with moving object, contact with stationary object, or non-contact) (p=0.63). Although not reaching statistical significance (p = 0.056),  females exhibited a trend towards missing more playing time following an injury.


Conclusions:

Our study found that women were 2.57 times as likely to get injured than their male counterparts in collegiate WB. Given that rules are the same for both sexes, it is no surprise that type or cause of injury were not different. However,  females may be more likely to miss playing time following an injury, which warrants further evaluation. This may be due to differences in comfort with playing through an injury or anatomical factors predisposing females to more debilitating injury. Future studies involving a larger sample size from multiple universities with a prospective design are warranted to improve generalizability.