Injuries to Professional and Amateur Kickboxing Contestants: A 15-Year Retrospective Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND Kickboxing is a group of full-contact combat sports that allows both kicking and punching from a standing position. Despite its popularity, there is a scarcity of published data elucidating the injury epidemiology in kickboxing. PURPOSE To determine the injury incidence, describe the injury pattern, and identify potential risk factors for injury in kickboxing. STUDY DESIGN Descriptive epidemiology study. METHODS Data describing fight outcomes and injuries sustained during professional and amateur kickboxing contests over a 15-year period were obtained from the official records of the Nevada Athletic Commission, United States. Injury incidence rates and rate ratios were calculated with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) per 1000 athlete-exposures (AEs) and per 1000 minutes of exposure. The injury pattern was described using frequencies and proportions of injuries by anatomic region and type of injury. In addition, Poisson mixed-effects generalized linear modeling was used to examine the multivariate relationships between injury incidence rates and potential risk factors. RESULTS The sample consisted of 481 unique fighters competing across 57 events, 976 AEs, 9562 minutes of exposure, and 380 injuries. The mean ± SD age of the fighters was 29.0 ± 5.3 years (range, 15-48 years). The overall injury incidence rates were 390.1 injuries (95% CI, 351.9-431.4) per 1000 AEs and 39.7 injuries (95% CI, 35.8-43.9) per 1000 minutes of exposure. The most commonly injured anatomic regions were the head (57.8%) and lower extremity (26.1%), while the most common types of injury were laceration (70.6%) and fracture (20.6%). Professional fighters were 2.5 times more likely to get injured compared with amateurs (rate ratio, 2.51; 95% CI, 1.39-4.55), while defeated fighters were 3.5 times more likely to get injured compared with winners (rate ratio, 3.48; 95% CI, 2.73-4.44). CONCLUSION Injuries are frequent and often significant in kickboxing, and better injury surveillance is strongly recommended. The scarcity of good-quality epidemiological data in kickboxing, especially pertaining to the severity of injuries, underscores the urgent need for further research, whereupon evidence-informed sport safety and injury prevention policies can be developed.