Reviewing the evidence around injuries and their prevention and recovery options in the world's game
The world's most popular game - football to most, soccer to some - can take a heavy physical toll on players. Given the massive number of male and female players lacing up their cleats, there has been a surprising dearth of research around the incidence of injuries and ways to prevent them on and off the pitch.
Into this knowledge gap comes a new review of the current evidence around soccer injuries and how to prevent them from Morteza Khodaee, MD, and a global team of sports medicine experts. Khodaee is a professor of family medicine at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine in addition to being the head primary care team physician for the Denver Nuggets and part of the primary care team for the Colorado Rapids.
"As a medical profession, we need to make sure we're working with soccer players and advising parents and coaches what we know and don't know about injuries in the sport," Khodaee said. "There are a lot of problems with misinformation in sports medicine and treatments not backed by evidence. In a sport this big, that can have a huge effect on people."
Below, Khodaee gives an overview of the range of soccer injuries, where the evidence is for their prevention and the challenges sports medicine faces in data collection.
