$2 billion is the estimated total burden each year for sports injuries in Australia. For children under the age of 15, sports-related injuries now represent four times the public health burden when compared to road trauma related costs.
In 2009, over 30,000 Victorians sought hospital treatment for sports related injuries; 10,000 of whom required hospitalisation. The direct total hospital cost was $51.8 million.
545,000 Australian’s are reported to have a long-term health condition caused by a sport or exercise-related injury.
A study of the senior Wellington club rugby amateur competition in New Zealand revealed that the average cost per player is $982; the average sub is $120. Some clubs are spending up to $1,000 per game on strapping.
The NHL injury bill is $218 million a season, of which $128 million is for concussion-related injuries.
The NFL was sued last year by a group of former players for their handling of concussion related injuries. The NFL settled with the players out of court for $765 million.
74 players were officially reported as injured before Round 1 of this season’s NRL.
What can be done to reduce these soaring numbers of injures?
Obviously injures are part and parcel of sport, especially in contact sports, but these numbers are truly horrific.
There has been extensive research conducted into reducing sports injuries, after all we live in a culture of liability for everything!
The research always mentions practical solutions, like warming up thoroughly, wearing necessary protective equipment, drinking plenty of fluids, applying proper techniques in your chosen sport and not playing through injury.
But the cost of injures gets greater, despite our greater understanding of prevention.
Are there any radical or original solutions to dropping injury rates, apart from reducing the amount of sport played, something that will never happen in this highly-commercial environment?
Headgear was always seen as a major weapon in the fight against head injuries but headgear may in fact be counter-productive. Last year new rules from the International Boxing Association were introduced banning the wearing of headgear for amateur, elite male boxers who compete internationally.
Headgear can obscure peripheral vision, making it harder to see when a blow is being aimed at the side of the head. Indeed, research has shown a lack of headgear actually reduces the risk of concussion.
Charles Butler, chairman of the AIBA medical commission, looked at research involving 15,000 boxers, half of whom had competed with headgear and half without. He found in the 7,352 rounds that took place with boxers wearing headgear, the rate of concussion was greater than those that didn’t.
In New Zealand, there exists a centralised government agency called ACC which compensates for accidents. In other words, there exists a national surveillance for all sports injures by a single body, something that doesn’t really exist in Australia.
Could an ACC-like model work in Australia? The chances are slim!
For a start, ACC is a huge burden on the New Zealand tax payer, one that might not be easily sold in Australia. ACC isn’t always efficient and was recently the subject of a scandal that involved the leaking of private information.
Additionally, ACC doesn’t take into account the participation time for each individual in sport; it merely records the injury meaning that compensation rather than prevention is a key focus.
In Australia, if an agency like ACC was to be introduced sports insurers would object because they would instantly lose all of their business overnight to a government monopoly and private health insurance companies would lose one of the major incentives for younger members to join.
The soaring cost and frequency of sports injures is a problem that is growing, a problem that has serious ramifications for society and a problem that won’t go away.
Something needs to be done to reduce the bill, but what?
Adam Julian
Roar Guru
Enjoyed reading your answer, thanks, I was kind of hoping someone like you would answer. We do sit down way too much, way too many fat people in Australia to!
DBowman
Guest
I believe, that like most problems in this world, we need to learn from the past to protect the future. It could be said that the sportsmen of old could achieve similar feats to the modern athlete, yet injuries are disproportionately greater in occurrence nowadays. We need to ease up on the performance supplements and energy drinks and find out Why.
Coxinator
Guest
I'll be the first to suggest something radic here. Being a a Physiotherapist and Qualified Pilates Instructor also I would dare say the largest impact would be to reduce sitting time everywhere. Workplaces, schools, bus stops, trains, stadiums and homes. What this would do is reduce the stiffness of major areas of the body that then cause faulty biomechanics during activity. I spend most of my day fixing these postural issues caused by spending too much time in the one position. That said, if you stand all day you will end up with other faulty patterns too of movement as seen in those who do exactly that. What the body craves is all movement in all directions for a multitude of reasons. But at this stage most of us spend the bulk of our days hunched over like most of you are right now reading this I dare say.