The most common injuries, rehabilitation and recovery among soccer practitioners

Abstract

Introduction. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. As a contact sport it has a high risk and incidence of injuries, which most often affect the lower limb. For the player to recover it is neessary to attend to well planned rehabilitation.

Purpose. Analyzing the most common injuries among people practicing soccer and determining the role of rehabilitation in the treatment of these injuries.

Material and methods. The research group was 101 individuals, 88 male and 13 female who played soccer as amateurs or professionals, aged 10 to 45 and had been training for a minimum of 2 years.

Results. There were 487 injuries in total among all respondents, of which 370 were related to the lower limb and 117 to the upper body. Contussions and ankle sprains were the most common injuries. Every single preson included in the studies suffered from injury, but only 75.2% of them went to see a doctor after the incident and  only  56,4% attended rehabilitation.  Statistical significance has been present in the time to return to sports depending on the continuation of physical exertion after the injury, in the time to return to sport due to treatment or the lack of it, in the time to return to sports in relation to whether or not rehabilitation took place for patients with serious injury.

Conclusion. The most common sports injuries in soccer are lower limb injuries, including damage to muscles and tendons. Recovery time is related to the type of injury, treatment options and rehabilitation methods. People practicing soccer should monitor their training loads with a physiotherapist. This can reduce the amount of problems later in career or daily life.