A recent study revealed soccer players were more likely to suffer a concussion from colliding with another player than from heading the ball.
Heading the ball was found to be the source of injury for one-third of boys and one-quarter of girl U.S. soccer players, the JAMA Network Journals reported.
To make their findings, a team of researchers analyzed data collected from 2005 to 2006 through 2013 to 2014 in a large nationally representative sample of U.S. high school soccer players of both genders. The data revealed 627 concussions were sustained during almost 1.4 million athlete exposures (AEs) for girl's soccer and 442 concussions sustained during almost 1.6 AEs for males.
The findings also revealed 68.8 percent of boys and 51.3 percent of girls who sustained concussions did so from player-to-player contact. Heading was the soccer-specific activity during which 30.6 percent of boys and 25.3 percent of girl players received concussions.
The researchers noted soccer has become more physical contact-driven over time, which is believed to have led to more athlete-athlete contact and potential injuries. Soccer has also increased in popularity in the United States over the past three decades, between 2013 and 2014 11,718 schools fielded 417,419 boys' soccer players and 11,354 schools fielded 375,564 girls' soccer players.
"Banning heading is unlikely to eliminate athlete-athlete contact or the resultant injuries. Athlete-athlete contact was the most common mechanism of all concussions among boys (68.8 percent) and girls (51.3 percent) regardless of the soccer-specific activity during which the injury occurred. These trends are consistent with prior literature. Therefore, we postulate that banning heading from soccer will have limited effectiveness as a primary prevention mechanism (i.e. in preventing concussion injuries) unless such a ban is combined with concurrent efforts to reduce athlete-athlete contact throughout the game," the study concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
