Types and frequency of the injuries and their preventive treatment in some combat sports

Combat sports and martial arts are in the first group of ri sk for sport injuries due to the direct contact of the opponents. The aim of this study was to estimate the specificity and the frequency of injuries in some combat sports: boxing, judo, jujitsu, and karate. The group of respondents was composed of 220 ra ndomly selected sportsmen at the age of 11 to 49 (24,0 ± 7,75 years old on average), who have trained martial sports for at least 3 years. The cases of 202 respondents who admitted to be injured within last 3 years were further analysed. The study was base d on the survey designed by the authors. The study shows that 92% of the participants were injured. The most frequent were foot injuries (18,8%), arm injuries (15,4 %); most of the injuries were bruises (50,6%). Injuries of the upper limbs were more freque nt among boxers, whereas the lower limbs areas were more vulnerable to injuries among athletes training judo, jujitsu, and karate. Boxers reported to recover from injury faster (87,2%) then judokas (68,8%). Those practicing jujitsu were most likely to rene w their injuries (43,5%), and judokas happened to renew their injuries less regularly (32,8%). Boxers tended to use preventive treatments most frequently, and jujitsu athletes admitted to do it the least often. We found that the groups prone to injuries th e most were judokas and karate athletes; boxers were found to be the most resistant to injuries. There are specific injuries with the highest frequency in the area of the arm and foot experienced by boxing, judo, jujitsu and karate athletes. Respondents wh o did not use any medical treatment after the injury recovered fastest; injuries appeared to renew among sportsmen who underwent medical treatment earlier. Preventive treatment was reported by both athletes who experienced injuries and the respondents who were not injured at all.