SynthesisBritish journal of sports medicine2025
Injury and illness epidemiology in elite athletes during the Olympic, Youth Olympic and Paralympic Games: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in British journal of sports medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Performance, Biomechanical Demands, Injury Burden, and Health Surveillance in Wheelchair Court Sports and Selected Para Sport Cohorts: A Systematic Review.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Injury and Illness Prevalence and Incidence in Swedish Olympic Athletes: A 3-year Prospective Cohort Study.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- Asymptomatic Abnormalities in the Knee, Shoulder, and Ankle Joints of Collegiate Athletes: A Cross-Sectional MRI-Based Comparative Study.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Untapped Potential of Expert Elicitation in Sports Medicine Epidemiology.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- The relationship between training load and injury risk in taekwondo: a systematic review.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Surveillance of Athletes' Health in Resource-Constrained African Sports Contexts: Why Context Matters and Time To Catch Up.International journal of sports physical therapy · 2026Article
- Review
- Preventative Measures for Lower Extremity Skin Conditions in Paralympic and Adaptive Sports: An Epidemiological Overview.Archives of internal medicine research · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo systematically review and synthesise the incidence and characteristics of injuries and illnesses among athletes participating in the Olympic, Youth Olympic and Paralympic Games.
designSystematic review and meta-analysis. DATA SOURCES: PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus and Web of Science were searched up to 2 July 2024, and Google Scholar, ClinicalTrials.gov and WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform up to 12 December 2023. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES: Cohort studies conducted during the Games reporting injuries and illnesses among athletes. Risk of bias was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tool for prevalence studies, and certainty of evidence using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework.
results27 articles were included (10 Olympic, 4 Youth Olympic and 13 Paralympic Games). 23 articles had low, 3 moderate and 1 high risk of bias. Certainty of evidence was high to moderate for Olympic, high to low for Youth Olympic and low for Paralympic Games. Injury incidences per 1000 athlete-days were 6.5 (95% CI 5.9 to 7.2) during Olympic, 10.5 (95% CI 9.4 to 11.8) during Youth Olympic and 14.3 (95% CI 9.9 to 20.7) during Paralympic Games. Illness incidences per 1000 athlete-days were 3.6 (95% CI 2.8 to 4.7), 6.9 (95% CI 6.1 to 7.8) and 9.7 (95% CI 6.5 to 14.4), respectively. Lower limb injuries were frequent during Olympic and Youth Olympic Games, upper limb injuries during Paralympic Games and respiratory illnesses across all Games cohorts.
conclusionsInjury and illness incidences were highest in Paralympic Games, followed by Youth Olympic and Olympic Games. Incidences and patterns of injury and illness were sport and context specific, which could inform future prevention strategies. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42023475334.
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