Risk Factors for Injury in Pediatric and Adolescent Sports

Analysis of sports injury risk factors in child and adolescent sport has produced a number of significant injury predictors including age, balance, body size, maturity status, gender (specific to sport and type of injury), previous injury, stressful life events, rules regarding body-checking in ice hockey, volume of training, and fatigue. There is also preliminary evidence that the growth spurt is associated with an increased risk of injury and that menstrual irregularity and low-energy availability may relate to increased risk of injury in younger adolescents. However, results of risk factor analyses in child and adolescent sports may suffer from one or more methodological limitations and therefore should be interpreted cautiously. Risk factors identified should be viewed as initial steps in the important search for predictor variables and may provide interesting characteristics for manipulation in other experimental designs.