Page 45 - Safe Wrestling

Injuries in Wrestling

tially different numerical estimates within the same population. Both ap-
proaches are methodologically valid; however, they address different epi-
demiological questions concerning overall injury burden versus injury
risk per unit of exposure.

Injuries to the Head and Face
A major finding across the reviewed literature is the substantial method-
ological heterogeneity that materially influences reported injury rates.
In systematic reviews, injury incidence differed markedly between com-
petition-based studies (16.3 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures) and
database-driven studies (69.5 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures). Simi-
larly, injury-location distributions differed across surveillance approach-
es, with head/neck injuries accounting for 31% of injuries in competition-
based studies compared with 20% in database studies, while lower-
extremity injuries accounted for 24% and 39%, respectively. These find-
ings support the interpretation that surveillance sensitivity and the in-
clusion of training-related and minor injuries substantially influence
epidemiological estimates (Thomas & Zamanpour, 2018).
Surveillance during the 2020 Summer Olympics identified 28 injuries
across 322 wrestling matches, corresponding to 9.8 injuries per 100 ath-
letes and 8.7 injuries per 100 bouts. The dominant injury location was
the head and face region (71.4%), while the most common injury type
consisted of skin lacerations and contusions (60.6%), primarily result-
ing from direct physical contact. Most injuries were classified as mild
(78.6%), whereas smaller proportions were categorised as moderate
(10.7%) or severe (10.7%) (Shadgan, Szabolcs, et al., 2021).
In men’s National Collegiate Athletic Association wrestling between
the 2014–2015 and 2018–2019 seasons, head and face injuries accounted
for approximately 13% of all reported injuries, with similar proportions
observed in both practice and competition settings. Diagnostically, the
most frequently reported categories included sprains (25.5%) and strains
(15.6%), while concussions (7.3%) and illnesses/infections (7.3%) were
also prominent. Importantly, illnesses and infections occurred more fre-
quently during practice than competition. Activity-at-injury analyses fur-
ther indicated that injuries were commonly associated with takedowns
(27.4%) and sparring activities (16.8%), supporting the interpretation
that high-contact exchanges and transitional phases constitute key risk
contexts even when the affected anatomical regions vary according to
competition level (Powell et al., 2021).

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