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Teenage athletes aren't just making goals and running across the field - a lot of them are getting X-rays each year. Hi, I'm Dr. Cindy Haines, host of HealthDay TV.
More than 7.5 million high-schoolers played sports in a recent year. A new study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine took a closer look at the numbers of broken bones among these young athletes. They used injury reports from 100 American high schools for the 2005 to 2009 academic years.
Fractures made up about 10 percent of all the injuries that occurred in the high-school athletes. The highest rate of fractures happened while playing football, and the lowest was with volleyball. Boys were far more likely to have a broken bone, with 83 percent of fractures occurring in the guys.
Overall, fractures were more than three times as likely to occur during games than practices. The most commonly fractured body parts were the hands or fingers, which accounted for about 28 percent of these injuries. Wrists followed with about 10 percent, then lower legs with about 9 percent.
These findings suggest the need for good fracture-prevention programs to help protect young athletes, according to the researchers.
