Date of Award

8-2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Kinesiology & Public Health Education

First Advisor

Dr. Dennis Caine

Abstract

Objective: To study the nature and incidence rate of injuries that affect collegiate competitive swimmers and to examine the relationship between these injuries and specific risk factors. Background: Minimal research has been conducted on swimming-related injuries, with most studies being retrospective in nature. Only one study reported a calculated injury rate for athletic exposures. Past research reports that the shoulder is the most commonly injured location and that overuse injuries (e.g. tendonitis) is the most common injury type. Methods: IRB approval obtained through the University of North Dakota. Swimmers from UND swim team were asked to participate. Once consent was obtained, baseline data in the form of participant information and a medical history questionnaire was gathered for each participant. Afterwards, the swimmers were followed for an entire season to report any injuries and their exposure to swimming (attendance records, yardage, etc.). Once the season was over, descriptive and analytical data analyses were completed based off information obtained from the participants. Results: Of the 34 participants, 20 sustained a total of 31 injuries during the study period. Based on data found injury rates were calculated has being 5.55 injuries per 1000 AE's and 3.04 injuries per 1000 hours training. Risk factors included in this study were gender, years swimming competitively, history of any injury, and history of specific injury. Risk factors that remained significant in the multivariate analysis were history of any injury and history of specific injury. Conclusions: Injury rates reported in this study are higher than injury rates reported by previous swim-related studies. When compared to other overhead sports, swimming has a lower overall injury rate. As for distribution of injuries, the data reported in this study are similar to those that were reported in other swim-related studies.

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