Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center

Intoduction

Anine Nordstrøm will defend her doctoral thesis: "Injuries in junior and senior ice hockey: burden and potential risk factors".

Disputas: Friday 4^th of October 2024

Place: Gamle festsal, UiO

Time - Trial lecture: 10.15 – 11.00: "Mental health in Elite sport Activity"

Time - Thesis Defence: 13.15 – 16-15: "Injuries in junior and senior ice hockey:burden and potential risk factors".

Language: English

Commitee

Committee chair: Asbjørn Årøen, Professor II, Akershus universitetssykehus

1.st opponent: Frida Eek, Associate Professor, Lund University, Sweden

2nd opponent: Elizabeth A. Arendt, Professor, University of Minnesota, USA

Supervisors:

Main supervisor: 

Ove Talsnes, Associate professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo

Co-supervisors: 

Roald Bahr, Professor, Department of Sports Medicine, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences

Lars Nordsletten, Professor, Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Oslo

WHAT IS THE PROJECT ABOUT:

Ice hockey players are at high risk of acute time-loss injuries, but as the majority of previous epidemiological studies in elite ice hockey have used traditional sports injury surveillance methods and a time loss or medical attention injury definition, little is known about the burden of all health problems in ice hockey.

The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the magnitude of all health problems in male professional and junior elite ice hockey players, and to analyze potential risk factors for health problems expressed through level of physical fitness, and training and game load.

The dissertation is based on two separate research projects: two prospective cohort studies on professional and junior elite ice hockey players.

We found that 40% of professional and 25% of junior players reported symptoms from an injury or illness, and 20% of professional and 16% of junior players experienced health problems with a substantial negative impact on training and performance, at any given time.

We used a surveillance method designed to capture the full extent of all health problems, including illnesses and overuse injuries. Nevertheless, our data showed that acute injuries represented the major health problem. Traditional injury surveillance methods, based on time loss, may therefore be sufficient for the registration of injuries in ice hockey. However, our registrations did capture a greater burden from overuse injuries than traditional injury registration methods. In our study, low physical fitness did not appear to represent a risk factor for injury or illness in professional ice hockey players. Similarly, training and game load did not appear to represent risk factors for acute or overuse injuries among junior elite ice hockey players.

Sykehuset Innlandet has contributed funding to this project (together with OSTRC).