New Football Quarterly of our phd-Students (klick)

Rina Meha: An after-school football session transiently improves cognitive function in children

Benedict Gondwe: Communication quality between the medical team and the head coach/manager is associated with injury burden and player availability in elite football clubs

Rilind Obertinca: Extended Knee Control programme lowers weekly hamstring, knee and ankle injury prevalence compared with an adductor strength programme or self-selected injury prevention exercises in adolescent and adult amateur football players: a two-armed cluster-randomised trial with an additional comparison arm

Ana Ukaj: Cohort profile: the Swedish study of SUDden cardiac Death in the Young (SUDDY) 2000-2010: a complete nationwide cohort of SCDs

Edgar Schwarz: Cold water immersion of the hand and forearm during half-time improves intermittent exercise performance in the heat.

Guangze Zhang: Development of a standardised system to classify injury-inciting circumstances in football: the Football Injury Inciting Circumstances Classification System (FIICCS)

UEFA medical research grant 2023:

The UEFA medical research grant 2023 was awarded to our PhD Student Edgar Schwarz. The funded study will investigate if a cooling intervention can improve the health, safety and performance of footballers playing in the heat. Further details can be found here.

 

No relationship between Covid vaccination and sudden cardiac death in sport

 

A new rumor appears on social media claiming a relationship between the covid vaccination and sudden cardiac death in sport. Our medical director Prof. Tim Meyer and Dr. Florian Egger explain in the local news show "Aktuellen Bericht" (15.12.2021) why there is no scientific evidence for thus rumor. For many years Dr. Egger is thoroughly documenting cases of sudden cardiac death in sports and he says the data does not show any increase in cases since the Covid vaccination startet. You can find the report in German via sr.de (starting around 33 minutes). Details regarding the register can be found here.

The Accuracy of a Low-Cost GPS System during Football-Specific Movements

 

New paper from Emiel Schulze is published: A newly designed, low-cost GPS system was found accurate and reliable during football specific movements, making it a useful and affordable tool for sub-elite teams. 

Results of the FIFA Sudden Death Registry in worldwide Football (FIFA-SDR) published.

In cooperation with FIFA, sudden deaths in worldwide soccer have been registered and their causes investigated in a prospective observational study at the Institute of Sports and Preventive Medicine at Saarland University since 2014.  Dr. Florian Egger (specialist in internal medicine) and Prof. Tim Meyer (medical director) have now published the first results in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 12/2020:

617 cases of professional and recreational soccer players from 67 countries were reported to the FIFA Registry of Deaths in Football (FIFA-SDR) between 2014 and 2018. Of these, 142 players (23 percent) survived after successful resuscitation. The registry included sudden cardiac deaths and cases with survived cardiac arrest, as well as injury-related deaths in soccer. The average age of the affected soccer players was 34 ± 16 years, and 96 percent were men. The main cause in players over 35 years of age was coronary artery disease (76 percent); in players under 35 years of age, it was autopsy-negative sudden unexplained death (22 percent).

Survival rate for resuscitation with and without defibrillator 85 percent of athletes who suffered sudden cardiac arrest and were treated immediately on scene with a lay defibrillator, an automated external defibrillator (AED), survived. In contrast, without treatment with an AED, the survival rate was only 35 percent. "This result shows how important it is to have a defibrillator on site at soccer fields and at all sports venues in general. It is at least as important to train the athletes, coaches and staff in resuscitation measures on a regular basis. In our study, soccer players were the most frequent first responders on site. They are the ones who save lives in the first place," says Dr. Florian Egger.

 

 

PhD Programme Science and Health in Football  - Introduction external PhD candidates Rilind Obertinca and Rina Meha

Injury Prevention in Football (Rilind Obertinca, Sports Physiotherapist, MSc, Kosovo)

Although football is one of the most popular sports worldwide, it carries a risk of injury for players, both at professional and amateur level and in all age-groups. Studies show that the number of injuries tends to increase with age, with most injuries being located in the lower extremities, particularly at the ankle, knee and thigh.

Given the high importance of injury prevention, recently, the focus on developing injury prevention programs has increased significantly. Some of these programs are designed to prevent specific injuries, such as ACL or hamstring injuries, while others are designed to prevent overall injuries in football.

The aim of this doctoral project is to devlope a new injury prevention program and to analyze its effect on prevention of overall injuries in football payers.

Rilind Obertinca holds a Master of Science in Sports Phyiotherapy from Lithuanian Sports University, Lithuania and a Bachelor of Science in Physiotherapy from University of Prishtina, Kosovo.