Page 43 - Safe Wrestling

Injuries in Wrestling

frequent but potentially catastrophic head and neck trauma. According-
ly, the purpose of this review is to synthesise contemporary evidence
regarding: (1) the most common injury types and anatomical injury pat-
terns in wrestling; (2) risk factors that meaningfully modify injury like-
lihood and severity across settings and levels of competition; and (3)
prevention strategies supported by current evidence, including training
design, technique-focused interventions, hygiene and infection-control
measures, and safer weight-management practices.

Methods
A structured literature search was conducted using PubMed, Embase,
MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, and SPORTDiscus to identify peer-
reviewed studies addressing injuries in wrestling. Searches were per-
formed using the terms ‘wrestl’* and ‘injuries,’ combined with Boolean
operators as appropriate for each database. The search was restricted to
articles published between 2000 and 2025 and limited to full-text publi-
cations available in English.
Studies were considered eligible for inclusion if they:

1. evaluated orthopaedic injuries in wrestlers;
2. included athletes competing at the high school level or higher, in-
cluding collegiate, elite, and international cohorts; and
3. reported wrestling-specific injury data, such as injury incidence,
anatomical distribution, injury type, severity, injury mechanisms,
treatment approaches, or return-to-play outcomes.
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were included to provide con-
textual synthesis, for example by triangulating common injury patterns,
summarising broader epidemiological ranges, or contextualising preven-
tion strategies. However, these studies were treated as secondary evi-
dence and were not used in place of primary injury-incidence reporting
when original cohort data were available.
Studies were excluded if they were:

1. case reports;
2. non-English publications;
3. narrative (non-systematic) literature reviews; or
4. studies that did not provide wrestling-specific injury data, such as
mixed-sport investigations without separable wrestling outcomes.

43