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 On average, kickboxing has an injury rate of about 40 for every
1,000 minutes of playing time, or about 2.5 injuries an hour, the
study of U.S. competitions found.
That’s about as dangerous as karate, but exceeds the typical injury
rates of 1 per hour or less for mixed martial arts, boxing,
taekwondo or judo, said study author Reidar Lystad, a researcher
from Central Queensland University in Sydney.
“To the best of my knowledge, the (kickboxing) injury rate in the
present study is greater than those recorded in all previous studies
of injuries in popular full-contact combat sports,” Lystad said by
email.
Kickboxing is a contact sport that allows both kicking and punching
from a standing position. Competition rules can vary, and some
contests may allow grappling, the use of knees or elbows, leg kicks
or leg sweeps and throws, Lystad notes in the Orthopedic Journal of
Sports Medicine.
Contests are usually scheduled for three to five rounds, each
lasting about two to three minutes with a one-minute rest in between
rounds. Some professional contests can be scheduled for up to 12
rounds.
To assess kickboxing injury rates, Lystad analyzed data collected by
the Nevada Athletic Commission from 2000 to 2014 on 481 professional
and amateur fighters.
Over the study period, there were a total of 974 athletic exposures
(AEs) - competitions or practices with a potential for injuries -
which took place over a combined 9,562 minutes and resulted in 380
injuries.
The type of injury and body part hurt often wasn’t specified in the
data. For cases where this data was available, 71 percent of
injuries were cuts and 21 percent were fractures. The most commonly
injured parts of the body were the head and lower limbs.
Injury rates for professional kickboxers were more than double the
rates for amateurs.
One shortcoming of the study, however, is that it lacked data on the
severity of injuries.
It’s also possible that concussion data was inaccurate, because only
one was reported even though approximately two of five contests
ended in knockouts or technical knockouts when referees determined
one fighter could not safely continue.
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Still, the findings highlight the need for more research on the
frequency and severity of injuries in kickboxing, which might help
fine-tune safety and injury prevention policies in the sport, Lystad
writes.
Based on the results, kickboxing injury rates appear nearly 10-fold
greater than those in most National Collegiate Athletic Association
(NCAA) sports, said Dr. Suraj Achar, associate director of sports
medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of
Medicine.
For NCAA games, overall injury rates are 13.8 injuries for every
1,000 games or when an injury is possible, Achar, who wasn’t
involved in the study, said by email. For NCAA practices, the rate
is just 4 injuries for every 1,000 practices when this is possible.
By this measure, which isn’t adjusted for the number of minutes
athletes played, the kickboxing study found an injury rate of 390
for every 1,000 games or practices.
“Men’s wrestling and football have the highest injury rate, but
these only approximate 26 to 35 injuries per 1,000 athletic
exposures,” Achar said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1GZ3k7i Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine,
online November 3, 2015.
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