Category: Concussion
Research in Rugby growing exponentially-Rugby Research’s Top 15
Paging through the recently published book “The Science of Rugby” edited by Dr Craig Twist and Dr Paul Worsfold (link), which covers everything from strength and power training and match-day strategies for enhancing physical and technical performance, to nutrition and biomechanics in both rugby union and rugby league, I remembered there was a time not too long ago published research articles in rugby were few. To check that I was not falling victim to the recall bias, and because it is a Rugby World Cup year, I did a little Scopus search to determine the current status of research in rugby. Scopus is like Google, but for research papers. Scopus also organises information by year, source, country and affiliation.
So, the 1st search I did was for articles using the term “Rugby” in the title, abstract or part of the keywords. Using the term “Rugby” like this in Scopus means both League and Union papers will be included. Note, I did not exclude areas like humanities and business, and all data points may not represent full research articles. This is what we found…
Number of articles published on “Rugby”
3051 published articles since 1862, 40% of these published in the last 5 years.
Top Journals publishing on “Rugby”
Top journals publishing in rugby are BJSM, JSCS, JSS, and JSMS. SAMJ was the first journal to publish on rugby, BJSM the most consistent, and JSCS the most number of publications in the last 5 years.
Top Authors publishing in “Rugby”
Most published author in rugby- Tim Gabbett (Gabbett Performance)-no surprise there. The head S&C coach of the top performing team in the world, Nicholas Gill, is the 3rd most published author in rugby research. This says something.
Top affiliations publishing in “Rugby”
Top countries publishing in “Rugby”
We did the same search for “Rugby Union”. Using this search term will only output papers containing “Rugby Union” in the title, abstract or part of the keywords.
Number of articles published on “Rugby Union”
742 articles. Approximately 50% published in the last 5 years.
Top Journals publishing on “Rugby Union”
Top Authors publishing in “Rugby Union”
Top affiliations publishing in “Rugby Union
Top countries publishing in “Rugby Union”
I have a particular interest in the tackle situation. So, I did a search for “Rugby” AND “tackle”. Below are the results…
Number of articles published on “Rugby” AND “tackle”
170 articles. Approximately 46% published in the last 5 years.
Top Journals publishing on “Rugby” AND “tackle”
Top authors publishing on “Rugby” AND “tackle”
Top affiliations publishing on “Rugby” AND “tackle”
Top countries publishing on “Rugby” AND “tackle”
We could do the same searches for any aspect of the sport really (for example, the scrum).
Although research in rugby may be growing at a rapid pace, rugby (league and union combined) is still behind other team sports like football (I did a small search on “football” OR “soccer” and Scopus produced 26941 papers), and there is plenty of scope for research (not too sad about this). There are obvious products from this body of work (better conditioned players, more knowledgeable coaches, reducing the risk of injury, etc), but in terms of conducting research, the exponential increase in rugby research somewhat forces scientists to be creative, and highly applied in their studies.
Sharief Hendricks
Legislation effective for concussion prevention/management
SUMMARY: Legislation/regulation is an effective strategy to prevent and manage neurological injuries (including concussion).
The recent article of Gibson and colleagues 1 in JAMA paediatrics indicates that legislation can be effective in improving concussion management in children. Similarly, Cusimano et al. 2 concluded that there is more evidence to support wide-spread mandatory interventions (form of legislation/regulation) than protective equipment for the prevention of rugby-related neurological symptoms. This success could be related to the fact that some form of behaviour change is required if an intervention is to reduce injuries 3. Also, the advantage of legislation is that its effects are not dependent on a specific coach or player 4.
In combination, these two articles would suggest that nationwide prevention programmes such as RugbySmart or BokSmart are useful interventions for preventing and managing rugby-related neurological injuries.
References:
- Gibson TB, Herring SA, Kutcher JS, Broglio SP. Analyzing the Effect of State Legislation on Health Care Utilization for Children With Concussion. JAMA Pediatr. 2014 Dec 22.
- Cusimano MD, Nassiri F, Chang Y. The Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Neurological Injuries in Rugby Union: A Systematic Review. Neurosurgery. 2010 Nov;67(5):1404–18.
- Gielen AC. Application of Behavior-Change Theories and Methods to Injury Prevention. Epidemiol Rev. 2003 Aug 1;25(1):65–76.
- Benson BW, MCINTOSH AS, Maddocks D, Herring SA, Raftery M, Dvorák J. What are the most effective risk-reduction strategies in sport concussion? Br J Sports Med. 2013 Apr;47(5):321–6.
Best treatment for concussion involves rehabilitative, sub-symptom exercise
This week, Shameemah Abrahams has made a visual summary of a review article: “Effect of rest and treatment on sports concussion” which appeared in British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2013 (Vol 37, pages 304-307). The authors of the article were: KJ Schneider, GL Iverson, CA Emery, P McCrory, SA Herring and WH Meeuwisse.
You can see Shameemah’s take-home message from this article was in the screenshot of her infographic, below. To view Shameemah’s original infographic click on this link:
https://magic.piktochart.com/output/2075169-rest-and-treatment-for-sports-co
About Shameemah
Shameemah Abrahams majored in Biochemistry and Physiology for her undergraduate BSc (2008 – 2010) with honours in Physiology, specialising in Neuroscience, (2011) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She is currently in her first year as a Phd student at the UCT/MRC Exercise Science and Sports Medicine research unit, UCT. Her Phd project deals with the identification of genetic and non-genetic predisposing factors of concussion risk in South African rugby players. Her research interests include brain injury, physiological changes during exercise and genetic predisposition to injury.
Rugby Science 