Cycling and BasketBall Most Dangerous Sport
 

Most Dangerous Sports: Basketball, Cycling

Get in Shape, Get Proper Training to Avoid Sports Injuries

By Jeanie Lerche Davis
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD
on Friday, August 06, 2004

Aug. 6, 2004 -- Here's a heads up: Basketball and cycling are the most injury-prone sports, a new report shows. Football and soccer are close behind in sports injuries.


The report from the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) shows that 1.6 million basketball-related injuries were treated last year -- in hospitals, doctors' offices, ambulatory surgery centers, clinics, and hospital emergency rooms.


Bicyclists racked up nearly 1.3 million injuries; football scored 1 million; soccer tallied a little less than 500,000 injuries.


"The summer Olympic games may inspire people to try a new sport. ... But before they do, people need proper training and conditioning to reduce their risk [of sports injuries]," says Pietro Tonino, professor of orthopaedic surgery at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, in a news release.


Tonino was not involved with the CPSC report, but offered words of advice.


Many sports injuries can be prevented by knowing and playing by the game rules, being physically fit, and wearing protective gear, he adds. "This applies to children as well as adults."


Women and girls are two to eight times more likely to have knee injuries -- such as torn or sprained ligaments, he explains.


Ligaments are rope-like bundles of fibrous tissue which connect structures. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the center of the knee connects the shin bone to the thigh bone. It can be injured when an athlete jumps, lands, twists, pivots, or suddenly stops, he explains. Basketball, soccer, football, volleyball, running, and skiing all involve these movements.


"Females tend to land from a jump with their knees locked, which puts added pressure on the knee," says Tonino. The resulting sports injury can be a sprain or tear of the ligament.


Slightly bending the knees and hips when landing will reduce injury risk. Playing on even surfaces, rather than something like sand, also decreases sports injuries.


Although injured ligaments can be surgically repaired, recovery and rehabilitation take the athlete out of the game for months, he says. Nonsurgical treatment is available for mild sports injuries but preventing injuries in the first place is the goal, Tonino says. <<<<<<<<
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I find this hard to believe. I never knew cyclist were injured in greater numbers than football players. Maybe they aren't including all the football related injuries because they cart off quite a few players during an actual game not including practice.

Easy to believe and a classic example of why one should be careful when reading stuff like this.

Cycling has greater numbers of injuries, not more injuries per man hour of activity, just greater numbers. By this measure running with the bulls is safe after all the number of injuries is low, of course so is the number of participants.

Actually all this says is that there are a lot of cyclists out there and from time to time they get hurt.

It also depends on how the term "sport" is defined. My guess is that they are including all uses of a bike, including commuting, etc, as opposed to bike racing which is a sport and is more equivalent to playing basketball. And on that basis, my guess is that cycling as a sport has fewer injuries (although who knows)?

I would also assume that this includes all riders, including children. Even though Pop Warner Football is big for children I doubt the numbers approach the number of children riding bicycles. A better comparison perhaps would be the number of injuries per participant.

Completely content-free statistics and the results are probably misinterpreted by the reporter. Absolute numbers without the context of participation levels are meaningless. The reporter is functionally innumerate. A useful statistic in ranking the degree of danger in various sports would be injuries per thousand participants. There are a lot more middle-aged weekend warriors on bicycles than on the football field.

yep, dumb statistics. if i get hit by a car on a group ride, bet they call that a "cycling-related injury." but if i sprain an ankle in a pick-up touch football game, bet it's not counted as a "football related injury."

Probably "sports related injury".

Basketball does seem to cause a lot of injuries, especially the knees-all that running back and forth seems to be murder on the knees. ANd broken fingers and shoulder problems.

Yep, dumb stastictics....... I would have thought rollerblading, for instance, would be up there on top....

By far, the most dangerous sport is "tv watching". It kills thousands of Americans every week. The second most dangerous sport is "the refrigerator waddle", which is the sport by which 200 pound women and 300 pound men waddle over to the frig for another heaping plate of fatty crap.

In comparison, over the past five years, my eight or ten "crashes" have given me some scrapes and bruises, a few days of soreness, and a headache or two. Along with better physical fitness than I had twenty years ago.

The problem with statistics is how they are defined. Heart attacks and strokes are the "injuries" from the "tv watching" and "refrigerator" sports. Not reported in the article.

Yet another classic example of poor reporting and biased media.
The reporter, Jeanie Lerche Davis obviously does no deep investigating
nor probably cares anyway. She bangs out a boiler plate story based on
an a monthly or quarterly industry report from the CPSC. She is an exact
example of why the majority of the media sucks.

Throw around some fringy stats and call them facts.
What statistic it does cleary show though, is how lazy, ill-equipped,
irresponsible, and third-rate her work and work ethic truly is. Sad.

:roflmao:

I seriously busted up my arm (surgery and pins) 5 years ago playing inline hockey--a pick up game. I highly doubt that went into the statistic. I highly doubt that the injuries there include pickup basketball and football games. They are probably just from organized events.

It really depends on the individual and what you do.
If you go downhill biking flying off 20-30 ft cliffs every day, statistics be damned, I can guarantee you will have a 5000% greater chance of injury compared to any other sport in the world.

Is a torn ACL equal to some road rash? I don't think so. And alanbikehouston is right, heart attacks and strokes are the "injuries" from the "tv watching" and "refrigerator" sports and these 2 maladies are far too common in the general public.

The problem with the statistics is it does not differentiate between "injuries".

Runners were not mentioned. But any experienced cyclist knows quite a few runners who have taken up cycling because they blew out their knees running. The average runner just has so many miles in their legs before pffft.

Cyclists almost never suffer career ending injuries because cycling is a low impact activity. Most of the injuries suffered are things like road rash from falls. There are a few broken bones and most commonly collar bones which heal up fine in the vast majority of cases.

Cycling is not anything like football. Football players suffer statistically reduced lifespans from the cumulative effect of the many injuries they suffer. In facts, I would suggest that in the upper levels of football, the players are injured several times in each and every game.

Bill Walton can not walk properly today because he blew out his knees playing basketball. He kept in shape by cycling.