Acute Catastrophic Injuries in High School Sports

While very rare, catastrophic injuries in adolescent sports have a major impact on athletes and their families when they do occur. This chapter reviews and summarizes the sparse research on direct catastrophic injuries in high school sports. A direct catastrophic injury is defined as a sport injury that resulted from participation in the skills of a sport, and resulted in a fatality or in a nonfatal brain or spinal cord injury, or skull or spinal fracture. The data for this chapter were provided by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, which has the most extensive and complete data set on this issue relative to high school and college sports. This chapter reviews and summarizes what is known about the frequency and rate of occurrence of these injuries in various high school sports, possible risk factors for these injuries, injury mechanisms and provides suggestions regarding what can be done to reduce the risk of occurrence and severity of these injuries.