Prediction of Injury among Elite Dancers

Three Years of Prospective Surveillance

3035 Board #6 June 2 3

15 PM - 5

15 PM

Injuries in dance are commonplace and distressing in terms of human and financial impact. It is the hope of dance medicine healthcare professionals and educators to detect risk for injury prospectively, often through screening efforts. It is known that screening has been very useful for rapport building, improving health literacy and facilitating entryways to local healthcare systems. However screening, as we have been conducting it, has still not proven to be predictive of injury despite implementation of preventative interventions such as pre-season conditioning programs.

PURPOSE: To test the predictive validity of four patient reported outcome measures (PRO) in addition to an array of motor control designed clinical performance-based outcome measures (CPBO) collected during preseason screening in predicting subsequent season time loss injury.

METHODS: 241 elite classical dancers (21.5±5.0 years; 69 men, 172 women) who received regular onsite care consented to participate in PRO and CPBO-based preseason screenings and ongoing, healthcare practitioner documented injury surveillance. The PRO’s utilized in this study were the Discomfort Rating Scale (DRS); the World Health Organization Functional Scale (WHO); the Profile of Mood States total score (POMS) and the Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT). Data were analyzed with a multivariate logistic regression model for the outcome variables “injured in subsequent season” and “number of therapy visits in subsequent season”.

RESULTS: All PRO variables were associated with the primary outcome variables (p=0.003, R²=0.492, R²=0.242, adjusted R²=0.205).

CONCLUSION: Injury prevention screening for dancers should include PRO scores to predict those at greatest risk for time loss injury.