The 2019 Cameroon University Games: Prevention Strategies for Musculoskeletal Injuries.

Background. The real burden of injuries among student athletes during the Cameroon University Games (CUG) is not yet known. The purpose of this study was to determine and analyze the incidence of musculoskeletal injuries among university athletes during the XXII CUG, hosted by Dschang University in May 2019. Methods. In this prospective cohort study, we recorded the daily number of injury occurrence among Olympic, Paralympic and fan's club university athletes from the reports of all the CUG 2019 medical teams. Injuries were analysed overall and according to age, gender, sports type, location, body region and mechanism. Associations were investigated by Chi Square or Fisher's exact test as appropriate, with P < 0.05 considered as statistically significant. Results. Out of the 2583 university athletes (1976 in Olympic, 97 in Paralympic and 510 in Fan's club) of the 2019 CUG, a total of 235 musculoskeletal injuries (without any double starter), representing an overall incidence rate of 9.1 injury per 100 athletes was found. No injury was reported among the Paralympic athletes. The incidence among Olympic sports and Fan's club athletes were 10.4% and 5.9%, respectively. The sports with the top three highest injury incidence during the 7-day competition was wrestling (33.3%), judo (18.4%) and football (16.9%); while sprain (42.1%), contusion (18.7%) and skin injury (18.3%) were the injury type with the highest proportion. Even though no significant difference was observed between females and males' Olympic athletes in the overall injury incidence, a significantly higher difference was observed among males (13.7%) when compared to females (4.8%) handball players, P = 0.01. Lower limb was the most injured body region; while knee, ankle, leg and thigh the commonest location observed. Of note, there was up to 5.9% overall injury incidence among the fan's club, which are also considered as athletes in this competition, a peculiarity of the CUG. Lastly, a total number of 4 concussions was found. Conclusions. Overall, injury incidence in athletes was 9.1% during the 2019 CUG. However, there is a need to monitor the occurrence of injury rates over time in various disciplines and sports in order to best design effective prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]