Sport is a part of the essence of Australian culture. Despite active participation in sport having a range of positive physical, mental and social health outcomes, it is also a high-risk injury activity.
The latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) publication highlights that in 2019-20 approximately 52,300 sports injuries resulted in a hospital stay in Australia. During this time, males experienced twice as many sporting injury hospitalisations compared to females, accounting for 36,400 hospitalisations. In regard to the reason for sporting injury hospitalisations in Australia, just over half were due to a fracture (n=26,700) and the sports responsible for the highest number of hospitalisations involved wheels (i.e. cycling, motorsports and roller sports).
The publication also demonstrates the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the incidence of sporting injuries. When compared to the previous year fewer hospitalisations were noted for winter sports, such as football, whilst injuries from solo activities, such as cycling, increased.
For more information about who was hospitalised, the types of injuries sustained and the sports that they were playing access the full publication here.
Fortunately, through injury prevention and injury management strategies, the potential harm from participating in sport can be reduced.
Aiming to quantify the potential saving to be gained from sporting injury prevention activities and increasing physical activity levels across Australia, the AIHW has released its first stage of work within its economics of sports injury and participation project.
The preliminary results suggest that each year approximately $750 million is spent on managing relatively severe injuries that were associated with inadequate injury prevention and management during physical activity. Additional analysis indicated that conditions associated with physical inactivity costs the Australian health system close to one billion dollars each year.
To collate better data on sports injuries and to help improve injury prevention and management activities, AIHW are currently in consultation regarding the national sports injury data strategy. The draft strategy builds on previous sports injury work and outlines how a National Sports Injury Data Asset could be developed.