Daegu 2011 – Injuries and Illness Surveillance

Daegu, Korea – The 2011 IAAF World Championships, Daegu 2011 are the third occasion that the IAAF has employed an Injuries and Illnesses Surveillance study at the biennial World Championships, which is the pinnacle competition of the IAAF World Athletics Series of events.

The injury prevention study which is in line with the IOC Medical Commission’s own efforts was first put into place during the 11th edition of the IAAF World Championships in Osaka 2007 and was repeated in Berlin 2009. Surveillances have also been done in 9 other IAAF competitions including editions of the World Indoors, World Junior and World Youth Championships.

The IAAF is part of the IOC Injury Study Group that has set the basis for surveillance in Olympic Sports, and the IAAF Medical and Anti-Doping Commission is committed to working to make our sport safer for our athletes and is increasingly emphasising the protection of the athletes’ health and the prevention of injuries and illnesses.

It is of great importance to learn more about athletes´ injuries and illnesses incurred during the period of the Championships especially when we learn that nearly 10 out of each 100 competing athletes suffered a sport injury during both Osaka 2007 and Berlin 2009. Furthermore, close to 7 out of each 100 competing athletes suffered an illness during Berlin 2009.

These results have been recently published by the IAAF in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals, the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine and the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The team physicians and physiotherapists in Daegu are extremely important for the success of the project, as they have to report all injuries and illnesses of their athletes on a daily basis on a report form which is returned to the IAAF research team. Local Organising Committee doctors are also requested to report all injuries and illness that they might attend.

All information provided is treated with the strictest confidentiality, and includes diagnosis, symptoms, causes, anatomic localisations, etc… to enable the categorisation of injuries and illnesses and the later scientific analysis of the data.

One of the major goals is to transfer the science into practice so that team physicians and physiotherapists will soon have valuable information available that will enable them to organise their work in a more efficient way to prevent sports injuries and illnesses among their athletes.

The IAAF will publish the Daegu 2011 results in peer-reviewed scientific journals in the coming months as did for Osaka and Berlin.

IAAF

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