Epidemiologia das lesões no futebol americano: revisão da literatura

Abstract

Introduction: American football consists of eleven players on each team, with the objective of conquering the territory of the opposing team with a ball in hand. During the match, several events occur, such as fast movements, with a lot of power and sudden braking, involving strategic and tactical actions, extending throughout the match, which lasts approximately one hour. Although it is a sport of American origin, there is an increasing popularity of American football in Brazil. Due to the high contact energy during the practice of this sport, physical exhaustion exposes practitioners to a greater risk of injury. Objective: To identify the injuries that most occur in American Football athletes, through a literature review. Methodology: literature review in the last 10 years, in the Pubmed and Scielo databases, as well as in books and websites of specialized institutions. Results: The search in the databases resulted in 348 articles, of which 12 were selected to compose the work. The knee was cited by ten publications as one of the regions most affected by injury, followed by the ankle, cited in nine publications, and the shoulder joint with 5 citations. Of the soft tissues, the muscles of the thigh compartment and the ligaments of the knees and ankles are cited as injuries. As for the position in which more injuries occur, Defensive Backs and Running Backs were the most cited positions. Conclusion: It is concluded that since American Football is a sport that requires high performance, speed, agility and changes of direction, the appearance of injuries is common. Contact between players was cited as the main cause of injuries, with the lower limbs being most frequently affected. It is necessary to continue investigating injuries that affect athletes in this modality, in order to try to prevent new injuries, reduce current rates, be able to rehabilitate athletes more efficiently and optimize the performance of these players.