Incidence of Concussion and Time to Return-to-Play in the National Rugby League.

OBJECTIVES

To examine the rates of concussion and recovery time over the course of 2 seasons of the National Rugby League (NRL).

DESIGN

Descriptive cohort study.

SETTING

The NRL match play concussion injury surveillance system.

PARTICIPANTS

All NRL players who participated in the 2017 and 2018 season.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The (1) frequency of sideline injury surveillance identified head impact events in real-time during the games, (2) frequency of head injury assessments conducted by the medical staff, (3) frequency of medically diagnosed concussions, (4) number of days to medical clearance to return-to-play, and (5) number of games missed after concussion.

MAIN

RESULTS

There were 472 head injury assessments conducted during the games and 149 medically diagnosed concussions over the course of 2 NRL seasons (1 concussion every 2.70 games). The median number of days until medical clearance was 6 (M = 6.85, SD = 8.03, interquartile range = 4-7; range = 0-79 days). There was a statistically significant difference in the number of days to be medically cleared to return to full contact or match play between seasons (U = 3517.00, P = 0.001), and the percentage of players medically cleared to return-to-play at 5 days after injury was 60.6% in 2017 and 27.6% in 2018. Most players (87.9%) did not miss a game after injury.

CONCLUSIONS

There is approximately one concussion sustained for every 3 games in the NRL. Most players are medically cleared to return-to-play in 4 to 7 days.