Professional Women's Softball Injuries: An Epidemiological Cohort Study.

Objective: To report the epidemiology of Women's National Professional Fast-Pitch (NPF) softball injuries during the 2017 season. The secondary objective was to evaluate risk factors for pitching injuries.

Design/setting: Prospective injury data were collected from the primary clinical care of 6 professional softball teams.

Participants: The NPF study population consisted of 153 players.

Independent Variables: Data collection included the following: number of practices each week, diagnosis of the injury, game or practice injury, position played when sustaining the injury, treatment for the injury, number of missed practices and/or games as a result of the injury, and total days until return to play.

Main Outcome Measures: Injury rate (IR) overall, IR in position players, and IR in pitchers. Secondary outcomes included risk assessment for injury in pitchers; descriptive statistics on the injuries recorded in all players.

Results: Pitchers reported both upper extremity and lower extremity injuries equally, whereas positional players reported more lower extremity injuries. Pitchers were also most likely to be injured during a practice than a game. Overall, there were 3.26 reported game injuries per 1000 athlete exposures (AE) and 4.79 practice injuries per 1000 AE. Pitchers specifically had 1.88 reported game injuries per 1000 AE and 5.66 practice injuries per 1000 AE.

Conclusions: In contrast to previous data, our study showed an increased IR in practice as compared to games in both position players and pitchers. Significant injuries were relatively rare, and most injuries seemed minor, usually with less than 7 days missed, suggesting a relative safety associated with this sport.