Sports Injury and Physiotherapy Services in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Paralympic Games: Considerations and Potential Recommendations for Future Paralympics

Research Objectives

To highlight the demographic and clinical characteristics of injured athletes and non-athletes and the physiotherapy services provided during the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Paralympic Games.

Design

Prospective descriptive epidemiology study.

Setting

Physiotherapy Department of Paralympic Village Polyclinic, Republic of Korea, during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Paralympic Games.

Participants

The study group comprised 201 participants (51 athletes and 150 non-athletes) who were admitted to and utilized the polyclinic physiotherapy service from March 1 to March 20, 2018.

Interventions

The five major comprehensive physiotherapy services included advice (counseling, consultation, referral), therapeutic exercise, manual manipulative therapy, therapeutic modalities, and assistive (prophylactic) devices. The selection of physiotherapy service items was based on the recommendation and guidelines of International Olympic Committee (IOC)/IPC medical commissions and clinical evidence in current literature.

Main Outcome Measures

Types and number of patients and number of physiotherapy modalities used.

Results

Chronic injuries were the most common (n=100, 51%) in athletes and non-athletes. Anatomical injury site analysis revealed the spine and shoulder areas were injured with equal frequency for athletes (n=14, 54.9%) and non-athletes, with the frequencies of 36.7% (n=55) and 26% (n=39), respectively. The Pyeongchang WPG showed a high rate of athletes visiting the physiotherapy service during the pre-competition period (n=50, 33.3%), perhaps led to a lower incidence rate of traumatic injury. The physiotherapy treatment service analysis demonstrated that manual therapy (n=230, 35.4%) was most commonly utilized.

Conclusions

We established the importance of prophylactic and preventive physiotherapy services to reduce the risk of sports injuries during WPG.

Author(s) Disclosures

The authors report no conflict of interest.