329 - Marching Band Injuries in Children Presenting to Emergency Departments in the United States, 2012-2021: A Trebling Tale
Saturday, April 29, 2023
3:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET
Poster Number: 329 Publication Number: 329.208
Jacob Coene, San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium, San Antonio, TX, United States; Patrick T. Reeves, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine, JBSA FSH, TX, United States
Pediatric Resident San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium San Antonio, Texas, United States
Background: Marching band is both a sport and a performance art. Organized athletics like soccer, football and cheerleading all have established epidemiologic trends of injury-related morbidity, including stigmata from head trauma. By comparison, marching band, anecdotally, leads to injury. Despite this potential for significant morbidity (e.g. concussion or heat injury), little evidence exists on the epidemiology of marching band related injuries.
Objective: Our study seeks to close this knowledge gap by characterizing marching band injuries which led to children being evaluated in Emergency Departments (ED) in the United States (US) from 2012-2021.
Design/Methods: The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database was queried using the product code 1200 (Sports or recreational activity, not elsewhere classified) to search for ED visits in the US. We applied a natural language processing search to evaluate the frequency of injuries in children 0-25 years of age from 2012-2021 whose narrative encounters included “marching” or “band”. Encounters were grouped based on age (10-13 [middle school], 14-18 [high school], 19-25 [college]), sex, and body part affected. Care patterns were investigated for diagnoses and escalation of care. All reported values are population national estimates generated from actual marching band-related injury encounters and were calculated using the NEISS-supplied weights and variance variables. Rao-Scott Chi-square was used for all categorical comparisons.
Results: From 2012 to 2021 there were 20,335 estimated marching band injuries (MBI) from 579 actual cases (95% Confidence interval (95% CI) 12,892-27,777) (Table 1). Of the MBI recorded, 84% occurred in those aged 14-18 years [i.e., high school] and 71% occurred in females, P < 0.01 and P < 0.01, respectively. The ankle (19%), knee (17%) and foot (8%) were most injured (Table 2). Major diagnoses in descending order of frequency were soft tissue injuries (10,891 (95% CI 6,666-10,492), concussion (918 (95% CI 437-1,399), fracture (763 (95% CI 286-1,241) and heat injury (875 95% CI 261-1,490) (Figure 1). Of MBI, 98% did not require escalation of care, P < 0.01.
Conclusion(s): This is the first nationwide estimate of marching band injuries presenting to an ED. Injuries were most likely to occur in females of high school age, with soft tissue injuries making up over half of all diagnoses. While concussions comprised 7% of injuries, almost 98% of all MBI were released from the ED. The injury patterns described in our study provide an opportunity for targeted public health intervention by sports medicine teams.
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