The Brazilian Football Association (CBF) model for epidemiological studies on professional soccer player injuries

OBJECTIVE This study aims to establish a national methodological model for epidemiological studies on professional soccer player injuries and to describe the numerous relevant studies previously published on this topic. INTRODUCTION The risk of injury in professional soccer is high. However, previous studies of injury risk in Brazil and other countries have been characterized by large variations in study design and data collection methods as well as definitions of injury, standardized diagnostic criteria, and recovery times. METHODS A system developed by the Union of European Football for epidemiological studies on professional soccer players is being used as a starting point to create a methodological model for the Brazilian Football Association. To describe the existing studies on professional soccer player injuries, we developed a search strategy to identify relevant epidemiological studies. We included the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences and Medline databases in our study. RESULTS We considered 60 studies from Medline and 16 studies from the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences in the final analysis. Twelve studies were selected for final inclusion in this review: seven from the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences and five from Medline. We identified a lack of uniformity in the study design, data collection methods, injury definitions, standardized diagnostic criteria, and the definition of recovery time. Based on the information contained within these articles, we developed a model for epidemiological studies for the Brazilian Football Association. CONCLUSIONS There is no uniform model for epidemiological studies of professional soccer injuries. Here, we propose a novel model to be applied for epidemiological studies of professional soccer player injuries in Brazil and throughout the world.