Injury incidence and severity in Chinese pre-professional dancers: A prospective weekly monitoring survey.

OBJECTIVES: To determine dance injury incidence and severity in full-time Chinese pre-professional dancers.

STUDY DESIGN: Prospective weekly online monitoring survey.

METHODS: Respondents were asked to record all dance-injury incidences between September 2020 and July 2021 using a remote weekly self-report injury monitoring tool. An inclusive definition of injury was used in this study to record all injuries, even if they didn't cause a cessation of training. Data were excluded if respondents completed <90 % of the survey period and had over 3 consecutive weeks of missing data.

RESULTS: 450 individuals from 11 different schools were included in the analyses. A total of 1157 injuries were reported over a 30-week academic year. Injury prevalence was 64.9 % and injury incidence was 5.51 injuries per 1000 h. Forty-eight percent of the injuries were minor severity and 41 % were of moderate severity, and the main injury sites were knees (0.89/1000 h), lower back (0.80/1000 h), feet (0.58/1000 h) and groin (0.56/1000 h). Female dancers reported significantly higher injury prevalence and injury incidence, and higher rates of moderate to severe injuries than males. The university group reported higher injury incidence than the adolescent group (p < 0.05), whereas the latter reported higher rates of moderate to severe injuries than the former (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: The injury incidence found in this study (5.1 injuries/1000 h) is higher than most previous sets of data. Female dancers are at a higher risk of injury and reported higher levels of injury severity than male dancers, especially for the female adolescent group.