Pee Wees playing contact hockey, what are the injury risks? Risk of Injury Associated With Body Checking Among Youth Ice Hockey Players Carolyn A. Emery et al; 2010 A 2010 Canadian study provides detailed information on the risks associated with younger players participating in contact hockey. Alberta permits body checking at age 11 and Quebec only permits body checking from age 13. This situation presented an ideal opportunity for research on the injury risk associated with body checking in younger players. Studying approximately 75 teams from each state, players aged 11 and 12 years were well matched in terms of physical size (height/weight) and skill level. The study documented injuries by cause and severity during the 2007 – 2008 hockey season. This was a study of good quality and statistical reliability. Although this study focused on age groups corresponding to IHNSW first-year Peewee and final year Atom, a number of other studies of junior players up to age 15 have shown similarly increased injury risks associated with body checking. I could not identify studies addressing specifically the additional risk of “playing up” into a contact league above the child’s age grade, however, it would appear prudent to assume that this would expose them to greater risk than playing with their age cohort.
Pee Wee injuries, does body checking make a difference? Body checking was responsible for the bulk of injuries in Alberta, also intentional contact injuries (e.g. elbow, slashing, tripping) occurred twice as frequently when body checking was permitted. Risk of Injury Associated With Body Checking Among Youth Ice Hockey Players Carolyn A. Emery et al; 2010
Can we predict risk of injury?
What is the relation between bodychecking, injury and concussions? Should we enforce the rules better? • Bodychecking is the most common cause of trauma in hockey, • Bodychecking accounts for up to 86% of all injuries among players 9–15 years old. • Players in contact leagues are 4 times as likely to be injured (among those 9–15 years old) and 12 times as likely to receive a fracture (among those 12–13 years old) as players in non-contact leagues. • Of reported injuries among players 9–15 years old, 45% are caused by legal bodychecks and 8% by illegal checks, without a significant difference in the injury profiles between the 2 types of checking. • Stricter enforcement of rules would not, therefore, have much impact on injury rates. • Anthony Marchie and; Michael D. Cusimano. Bodychecking and concussions in ice hockey: Should our youth pay the price? CMAJ July 22, 2003 169:124-128 • Committee on Sports Medicine and Fitness, American Academy of Pediatrics. Safety in youth ice hockey: the effects of body checking. Pediatrics 2000;105(3 Pt 1):657-8 . • Brust JD, Leonard BJ, Pheley A, Roberts WO. Children’s ice hockey injuries. Am J Dis Child 1992;146:741-7. • McFaull S. Contact injuries in minor hockey: a review of the CHIRPP database for the 1998/1999 hockey season. CHIRPP News 2001;19:1-9.
Don’t all contact sports have the same risk of injury for young players? • It is difficult to compare one sport with another with the same accuracy as can be obtained in the previous studies of junior hockey owing to differences in injury categorisation systems from one study to another. Comparing the most severe injuries gives the most reliable results. • A comparison with American football injuries helps highlight the issue of serious injury rates in youth ice hockey. The US National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury focuses particularly on reducing the risk of the most serious injuries in sport. Direct fatality and catastrophic injury rates for American football (a contact sport) are half those for hockey. • Nonfatal catastrophic spinal cord and brain injury rates are 2.6 per 100,000 hockey players versus 0.7 per 100 000 American football players among high school athletes. • The Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine says there should be no checking in minor hockey, and the American Academic of Pediatrics says bodychecking should not be allowed for players 15 and younger. • "If we don't ban bodychecking, minor hockey as we know it in Canada will come to an end." said Ãmile Therien, president of the Canada Safety Council, after reviewing the latest injury statistics showing increased concussion rates. British Columbia recently voted to eliminate body checking from all “recreational” levels of junior hockey. • It may be that reluctance by parents to start their children in junior ice hockey in NSW is partly driven by a failure to manage injury risk in our younger players, while paradoxically 80% of our adult players safely play non-contact hockey. • Insurance premiums may rise (as they did in Canada before helmet and face protection was mandated) if hockey does not address what are clearly preventable injuries. • Fatalities and Catastrophic Injuries in High School and College Sports, 1982-1997 • Lessons for Improving Safety Robert C. Cantu, MD; Frederick O. Mueller, PhD
Brain injury risks to younger ice hockey players playing up into contact leagues • There has been an increased awareness that concussion injuries in children may cause long-term neurodevelopmental impairment which is demonstrable on neuropsychological testing. • The syndrome of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury appears to occur more frequently in high school aged children after concussion than adults, and typically results in measurably impaired memory function, with or without headache and other neurological symptoms for 2 to 3 weeks. • We know that repetitive minor head injury in boxing strongly predisposes to a premature dementia like illness, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. • Children suffering single or repeated head injury may sustain harm that could potentially change a child's life. Research in this area is conflicting at present. • Although physicians are asked to advise about the "safe" time to return to the ice after head injury, there is little scientific validation that long-term neurological damage can be avoided by following current medical advice regarding return to sport after concussion. • In conclusion, this picture below is one that we as hockey parents never want to see. Our kids are too young to give meaningful consent to these risks and we need to debate the issue among ourselves thoughtfully as it is not clear that the alleged benefits are worth the risks.
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