ORTHOPEDICS THIS WEEK
VOLUME 13, ISSUE 38 | DECEMBER 5, 2017
7
Diving Injuries: The Obscure Corner of Sports Medicine
BY TRACEY ROMERO
W
hile competitive diving is cer-
tainly not new, the complexi-
ties of diving injuries are still little
understood. Nathaniel S. Jones, M.D.,
CAQ-SM, a family medicine and sports
medicine physician with the University
of Loyola School of Medicine in May-
wood, Illinois, hopes to change that
with his article, “Competitive Diving
Principles and Injuries,” published in
the September/October 2017 issue of
the Current Sports Medicine Reports.
Jones told OTW, “Most of the aquatic
sports literature has to do with swim-
ming, and although it has been improv-
ing, diving literature is still limited
despite its continued popularity espe-
cially in the Olympics.”
Wikimedia Commons and HighjumpCZ
According to Jones, while the 2016
consensus statement on the proper
methodology of data and injury col-
lection during aquatics championships
in FINA (International Federation of
Swimming) published in the British
Journal of Sports Medicine in May, 2016,
has made tracking injury information
easier, there is still much work need-
ed to be done on understanding the
mechanics of diving injuries.
What We Do Know
What we do know so far comes most-
ly from a handful of recent studies,
according to Jones. One study, “Epi-
demiology of National Collegiate Ath-
letic Association women’s swimming
and diving injuries from 2009/2010
to 2013/2014” published in the Brit-
ish Journal of Sports Medicine in 2015
looked at National Collegiate Ath-
letic Association (NCAA) swimming
and diving injuries from 2009 to
2014, where the researchers found an
injury rate of 1.94 injuries per 1000
athlete exposures (AE) for males and
2.49 injuries per 1000 AE for females.
They also found that more injuries
happened during practice than com-
petition.
In another study published in the
American Journal of Sports Medicine in
September 2009, researchers collected
data on divers in the 2008 Olympics
and found that 2.1% of them were
injured during the games. A higher
injury rate was found in another study
on the 2012 Olympics—“Sports inju-
ries and illnesses during the London
Summer Olympic Games 2012”--
where 8.1% of the divers were injured,
suggesting either an increase in injury
rates or an improvement in data col-
lection. Another study he mentions—
“Injury and illness in aquatic sport:
how high is the risk? A comparison of
results from three FINA World Cham-
pionships compared injury during
the (FINA) World Championships of
2015, 2013, and 2009 and found that
older athletes were at the highest risk
of injury.
The Physics of Diving
Jones suggests that it is the uniqueness
of the sport that makes understand-
ing competitive diving injuries such a
challenge. He told OTW, “Diving inju-
ries are more attuned or comparable to
gymnastic injuries. Although a lot of
time is spent practicing dives there is
also a lot time spent with dry land train-
ing which involves tumbling, which is
very similar to gymnastics. In addition,
there are very few other sports, if any,
in which the athlete is exposed to the
speed and forces that divers experience
especially when talking about the 10m
platform dives.”
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