Exploration of risk factors for sports injuries in athletes of table tennis

Abstract

The practice of table tennis requires numerous dynamic actions which could conduce to athletic injuries. Due to the shortage of studies on this modality, there is important to know inherent factors to athletic injuries for a preventive patterns subsequent formulation. The objective of this study was to explore the risk factors to athletic injuries in table tennis players. For that, there were evaluated 111 athletes who participated of Paulista Championship of Table Tennis, with mean age of 22.39±8.88 years, of both gender, recruited on a randomized way and classified into two level of competition: regional/state and national/international. It was used the Reported Morbidity Survey adapted to the table tennis characteristics in order to gathering information about the personal data, training data and athletic injuries. There was observed 0.51 injuries by athlete, and the athletes of national/international level presented the higher indexes of injury (52.94%) when compared with regional/state (48.84%). On specific gesture, the upper limbs (93.62%) and the trunk (87.5%) were the most affected sites. For both level of competition, the training was the more related moment of the injuries occurrence. The conclusions are that the athletes of national/international level present higher indexes of injury and the specific gesture is the principal reason of injury, affecting mainly the upper limbs and trunk, occurring more frequently during the training.