Risk of injury in elite football played on artificial turf versus natural grass: a prospective two-cohort study
Ekstrand J, Timpka T, Hägglund M
British journal of sports medicine · 115 citations
Review labels
Neutral facts our review recorded about how this study was done. They describe method, never whether we like the result.
How it was studied
- Design
- Cohort study (indexed by PubMed)
- Studied in
- People
- Main outcome
- Clinical events such as disease or death
Who paid for it
- Funding
- Funding not disclosed
Publication
- Published
- 2006-09-21 · Br J Sports Med · vol. 40 · issue 12 · pp. 975–980
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Cited
- 281 citations · more than 97% of similar papers · 6.7× the field average
- Impact
- Top 10% most cited in its field
- References
- 16 works
- Access
- Free to read
- Research areas
- Sports injuries and prevention · Traumatic Brain Injury Research · Sport Psychology and Performance
- Keywords
- Football, Prospective cohort study, Medicine, Cohort study, Elite, Cohort, Physical therapy, Surgery, Geography, Internal medicine, Political science
- MeSH
- humans, poaceae, ankle injuries, sprains and strains, risk factors, cohort studies, prospective studies, soccer, adolescent, adult, europe, male
3 authors
From SE
- Jan Ekstrand · correspondingLinköping University
- Toomas TimpkaLinköping University
- Martin HägglundLinköping University
Abstract
Objective
To compare injury risk in elite football played on artificial turf compared with natural grass.
Design
Prospective two-cohort study.
Setting
Male European elite football leagues.
Participants
290 players from 10 elite European clubs that had installed third-generation artificial turf surfaces in 2003-4, and 202 players from the Swedish Premier League acting as a control group.
Main outcome measure
Injury incidence.
Results
The incidence of injury during training and match play did not differ between surfaces for the teams in the artificial turf cohort: 2.42 v 2.94 injuries/1000 training hours and 19.60 v 21.48 injuries/1000 match hours for artificial turf and grass respectively. The risk of ankle sprain was increased in matches on artificial turf compared with grass (4.83 v 2.66 injuries/1000 match hours; rate ratio 1.81, 95% confidence interval 1.00 to 3.28). No difference in injury severity was seen between surfaces. Compared with the control cohort who played home games on natural grass, teams in the artificial turf cohort had a lower injury incidence during match play (15.26 v 23.08 injuries/1000 match hours; rate ratio 0.66, 95% confidence interval 0.48 to 0.91).
Conclusions
No evidence of a greater risk of injury was found when football was played on artificial turf compared with natural grass. The higher incidence of ankle sprain on artificial turf warrants further attention, although this result should be interpreted with caution as the number of ankle sprains was low.
Abstract via Europe PMC. Copyright remains with the authors or publisher.
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