Abstract
All sport injuries treated at the Emergency Department, Ullevil Hospital in Oslo (OKL) were registered for one year.
Abstract
They accounted for 6.3% of the total number of patients treated at OKL in that period. 4673 patients were seen; 3292 males and 1381 females. The women were younger than the men, 55% were below 20 years of age; 41% of the males (p < 0.05). Most of the men (64%) were injured in connection with competitive sports, but 52% of the women sustained their injury pursuing recreational sports. Football and skiing accounted for 49% of the total number of injuries. In males football caused most injuries -35%. In females handball accounted for most injuries -18%. Nearly % of the injuries affected the extremities; the most common injury being the ankle sprain (16%). Almost 1/4 of the patients had a fracture, and 218 patients (4.7%) were admitted to hospital, the rest being treated as outpatients. In all, the sports injuries required 7658 consultations.
INTRODUCTION
During the last decades sport participation has increased greatly at all levels in Norway. More people take part in competitive sports. They train more and compete more frequently than the athletes 20-30 years ago. However, the greatest increase in sport participation has occurred in recreational sports, well illustrated through the thousands of participants in various jogging events throughout the country. The "sport fad" is partly supported by the medical profession. Regular physical activity is advocated as an integrated and important part of most preventive health programmes. The Norwegian Medical Association has dedicated two issues of their journal to "Physical Activity and Health" (122B/1980 and 5B/1 983).
INTRODUCTION
However, increased sport participation results in an increased number of sports related injuries. In the planning of treatment facilities for and in the prevention of sport injuries, it is important to know more about the aetiology of these injuries. Such data should reflect all sport related injuries, not only those seen in special sport injury clinics (Andersen et al, 1959; Garrick and Requa, 1978a; Jackson et al, 1980) . In an investigation carried out in Oslo in 1946-48, sport injuries accounted for 8% of the total number of injuries seen (Johansen, 1955) . Other authors have published similar data (Crompton and Tubbs, 1977; Lang-Jensen, 1982) .
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this investigation was to study all sports related injuries which were treated at the largest emergency department in Oslo throughout one year.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Oslo City Hospital (Ullevil Hospital) has an out-patient emergency department (OKL) which serves about 650,000 inhabitants of the greater Oslo area 24 hours a day. In addition two emergency departments operate in the city during the day time (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.).
MATERIAL AND METHODS
During the one year registration period (12/10-81 -11/10-82) 74,708 patients were treated at OKL, 75.8% of the total number of patients seen in all three emergency departments in this period.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The records of the patients who had been engaged in sport activity when injured, were marked "SPORTS INJURY" and placed in a special file. The patients were treated according to standard hospital procedures by the regular staff. However, care was taken to ensure that all the relevant information was written down in the record. In addition to age and sex of the patient, day and month of the injury, diagnosis and treatment, information was collected on what sport was practiced and on what level (i.e. competitive or recreational). When treatment was finished, the case records were examined by one of the authors. All the information was coded and transferred on to special forms. In those cases where part of the information was lacking, the patient was contacted by letter or by phone to obtain the missing details.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The statistical analysis of the data on the 4,673 patients was performed in the EDP Center at Oslo University. A locally developed statistical package (DDPP) was used on a DEC-10 computer. In addition, when applicable, the Chi-square evaluation and student's t-test were used in analysis of the data.
RESULTS
Altogether 4,673 patients were treated for injuries caused by sporting activity during the registration period, accounting for 6.3% of the total number nvaldez@example.com. They required 7,658 consultations; the majority (66.2%) being seen only once. There were 218 (4.7%) admissions to hospital, and three were dead upon arrival at OKL, all from coronary artery disease.
RESULTS
When the patients were divided according to sex and age ( Fig. 1) , it was found that 70.4% were males and 29.6% were females. The injured females were somewhat younger than the males, 55% below 20 years of age compared with 41% of the males (p < 0.05).
RESULTS
In males the majority of the injuries (64.8%) occurred in connection with competitive sports (i.e. during competition or while training for competition). Only recreational sport between the two sexes in the group below 20 years of age (Table 1) . However, while in males older than 20 years, 70.1% of the injuries occurred in competitive sports, the corresponding figure for females was only 40.8% (p < 0.001). The number of sports injuries per month varied from 574 in February to 143 in July (Fig. 2) . In February sports injuries accounted for 11.1% of the total number of patients nvaldez@example.com. In July 2.2% of the injuries resulted from sport. 20.2% of the injuries occurred on Sundays (Table 11) . Fridays had the smallest number of injuries (10.1%). Significantly more injuries were caused by recreational sports during weekends than during the rest of the week (p < 0.001).
RESULTS
Football and skiing accounted for nearly 50% of the injuries in the total material. In the males more than 1/3 of the injuries occurred in football, with skiing being second accounting for 18.8% of the injuries (Table II1) . If alpine and nordic skiing are considered separately, In females skiing caused 23.8% of the injuries (Table  111) . However, more females were injured in handball (18.5%) than in nordic (14.3%) and alpine (9.5%) skiing considered separately. Football caused 11.8% of the injuries in the females.
RESULTS
About % of the injuries affected the extremities (Table IV) . Males had more injuries in the lower extremities than in the upper extremities. In females more injuries affected the arms than the legs. Thus it seems fair to assume that real number of acute sport injuries severe enough to warrant treatment is close to 6,000 on a yearly basis in Oslo. This makes it an important health problem.
RESULTS
Sport injuries accounted for 6.3% of the total number of injuries in our material; in agreement with previously published data (Burke et al, 1983; Crompton and Tubbs, 1977; Johansen, 1955; Lang-Jensen, 1982) . Others have found a lower incidence of sport injuries (Garrick and Requa, 1978a; SWrensen et al, 1977) . However, they have registered only patients participating in organised sports (Sirensen et al, 1977) , only during summer (Holm-Nielsen and Justesen, 1973) or from open wards which also treat patients with chronic ailments not seen at OKL (Schulkind and March, 1982) .
RESULTS
The high incidence of sports injuries in January and February is due to the fact that skiing is the major sport in Norway. The vast number of people skiing results in a large number of recreational ski injuries. This was also seen in 1946/48 (Johansen, 1955) . In Denmark the main sport is football. Correspondingly the highest number of sport injuries is seen during the football season, while few sport injuries occur in January and February (LangJensen, 1982) . The small number of injuries in July in ours and other Scandinavian studies (Holm-Nielsen and Justesen, 1973; Johansen, 1955; Lang-Jensen, 1982 ) is due to the lack of organised sport activities during summer vacation in these countries. The fact that recreational sport injuries account for a very large proportion of the injuries in July (Fig. 2) supports this view. Some 30% of the injuries occurred in females, this is slightly higher than that observed by others (Burke et al, 1983; Crompton and Tubbs, 1977; Holm-Nielsen and Justesen, 1973; Johansen, 1955; McRae and Topping, 1982; SUrensen et al, 1977) . In agreement with others (Crompton and Tubbs, 1977; Lang-Jensen, 1982) we found that significantly more females than males were below 20 years of age. Whether this is because the females above 20 years participate less intensely, engage in less injury-prone sports or simply have quit sports, cannot be determined from the present data. It is interesting to note that the relative number of females injured increased again in the age-groups above 40 years.
RESULTS
The largest number of injuries, 22% of the total, was seen in the 15-19 years group. This is in agreement with results from other hospitals (Burke et al, 1983; La Cava, 1951; McRae and Topping, 1982) as well as from OKL (Johansen, 1955) . However, while 40% of the patients in our material were between 10-20 years, only 28% were in this age-group in the previous OKL study. In Competitive sports accounted for 59% of the total number of injuries, lower than that observed by La Cava (1961) , but in good agreement with others (LangJensen, 1982; Weightman and Browne, 1975 .00 In agreement with most of the other authors already quoted, and including also Andr6n-Sandberg and Lindstrand, 1982; Garrick, 1981) , we found that a great majority of the injuries affected the extremities. To a large degree the sport performed determined the injury pattern (Andrdn-Sandberg and Lindstrand, 1982; Burke et al, 1983; Andersen et al, 1959; JOrgensen, 1983; Requa and Garrick, 1981) .
RESULTS
The finding that in males lower extremity injuries were more common than upper extremity injuries, can be attributed to the fact that football injuries dominated in men. Women had more arm than leg injuries because handball and basketball are important sports in females. In addition football accounted for only 11% of the injuries in females.
RESULTS
About 1/3 of the injuries were sprains; corresponding well with the 31% observed in 1946/48 by Johansen, reported in 1955 as well as with others (Jdrgensen, 1983; Shively et al, 1981) . Our finding that fractures account for nearly 1/4 of the acute sport injuries also agrees with previous data but in one paper fractures accounted for only 4% of the injuries (Lange-Andersen and Holen, 1955) . The authors, however, indicate that this was possibly caused by the fact that most of the fractures were taken directly to hospital.

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