Lower Extremity Injury Rates on Artificial Turf Versus Natural Grass Playing Surfaces: A Systematic Review
Gould HP, Lostetter SJ, Samuelson ER, Guyton GP
The American journal of sports medicine · 22 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
- Systematic review (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
- 2022-05-20 · Am J Sports Med · vol. 51 · issue 6 · pp. 1615–1621
- Publisher
- SAGE Publishing
- Cited
- 56 citations · more than 93% of similar papers · 3.0× the field average
- Impact
- Top 10% most cited in its field
- References
- 29 works
- Access
- Paywalled
- Research areas
- Sports injuries and prevention · Turfgrass Adaptation and Management · Lower Extremity Biomechanics and Pathologies
- Keywords
- Systematic review, Meta-analysis, Medicine, Football, Athletes, Physical therapy, Injury prevention, Poison control, MEDLINE, Emergency medicine, Geography, Biology, Pathology
- MeSH
- lower extremity, humans, poaceae, athletic injuries, ankle injuries, knee injuries, football, soccer
4 authors
From US
- Heath P. GouldMedStar Union Memorial Hospital
- Stephen J. LostetterMassachusetts Institute of Technology
- Eric R. SamuelsonGeorgetown University
- Gregory P. Guyton · correspondingMedStar Union Memorial Hospital
Abstract
Background
No study has provided a comprehensive systematic review of sports injuries on artificial turf versus natural grass.
Purpose
To comprehensively examine the risk of overall injuries and multiple types of lower extremity injuries across all sports, all levels of competition, and on both old-generation and new-generation artificial turf.
Study design
Systematic review; Level of evidence, 3.
Methods
A systematic review of the English-language literature was performed according to PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. All included articles compared overall injury rates or lower extremity (hip, knee, or foot and ankle) injury rates on artificial turf and natural grass. All sports, levels of competition, and turf types were included. Studies were excluded if they did not include overall injury rates or lower extremity injury rates. Because of the heterogeneity of the included studies, no attempt was made to aggregate risk ratios to conduct a quantitative meta-analysis.
Results
A total of 53 articles published between 1972 and 2020 were identified for study inclusion. Most studies on new-generation turf (13/18 articles) found similar overall injury rates between playing surfaces. When individual anatomic injury locations were analyzed, the greatest proportion of articles reported a higher foot and ankle injury rate on artificial turf compared with natural grass, both with old-generation (3/4 articles) and new-generation (9/19 articles) turf. Similar knee and hip injury rates were reported between playing surfaces for soccer athletes on new-generation turf, but football players, particularly those at high levels of competition, were more likely to sustain a knee injury on artificial turf than on natural grass.
Conclusion
The available body of literature suggests a higher rate of foot and ankle injuries on artificial turf, both old-generation and new-generation turf, compared with natural grass. High-quality studies also suggest that the rates of knee injuries and hip injuries are similar between playing surfaces, although elite-level football athletes may be more predisposed to knee injuries on artificial turf compared with natural grass. Only a few articles in the literature reported a higher overall injury rate on natural grass compared with artificial turf, and all of these studies received financial support from the artificial turf industry.
Abstract via Europe PMC. Copyright remains with the authors or publisher.
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