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Return to Play in Football pp 783–789Cite as

Return to Play After Injury: A Medicolegal Overview

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Abstract

Over the past decades, football has become the number one sport in the world. Similar to handball and basketball, football is a team sports with the highest risk of sustaining an injury. This issue was investigated in a prospective cohort study of 14 team sports during the Summer Olympics in 2004 [1]. The type and location of football injuries have hardly changed over the past three decades, and the body region most affected by football injuries is the lower extremities [2–6]. Most injuries are slight and associated with only a few days away from football. Severe injuries with time away from football of more than 4 weeks only amount to approximately 10–20% of all football injuries [2, 7, 8]. Severe injuries have led to the development of different return-to-play strategies and the determination of various factors and parameters influencing the decision-making process.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sports Medicine, University Hospital Tübingen, Hoppe-Seyler-Strasse 6, 72076, Tuebingen, Germany

    Heiko Striegel M.D.

  2. Department of Trauma Surgery, University Medical Centre Regensburg, Franz-Josef-Strauss-Allee 11, 93053, Regensburg, Germany

    Werner Krutsch M.D.

  3. Department of Sports Orthopaedics and Sports Traumatology, Sportklinik Stuttgart, Taubenheimstraße 8, 70372, Stuttgart, Germany

    Raymond Best M.D.

Authors
  1. Heiko Striegel M.D.
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  2. Werner Krutsch M.D.
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  3. Raymond Best M.D.
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heiko Striegel M.D. .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Volker Musahl

  2. Department of Orthopaedics, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Jón Karlsson

  3. Department of Trauma Surgery, University Medical Centre Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Werner Krutsch

  4. Santa Monica, California, USA

    Bert R. Mandelbaum

  5. Clínica do Dragão, Espregueira-Mendes Sports Centre, Porto, Portugal

    João Espregueira-Mendes

  6. Orthopaedic Surgery, Aspetar Hospital, Doha, Qatar

    Pieter d'Hooghe

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Striegel, H., Krutsch, W., Best, R. (2018). Return to Play After Injury: A Medicolegal Overview. In: Musahl, V., Karlsson, J., Krutsch, W., Mandelbaum, B., Espregueira-Mendes, J., d'Hooghe, P. (eds) Return to Play in Football. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55713-6_58

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55713-6_58

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-55712-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-55713-6

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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