797 MEP155 – Prevalence of weekly self-reported health problems in young elite female football player during an entire football season

AbstractBackground There is a lack of epidemiological data on health problems of young elite female football players (Mandorino et al., 2023).Objective The aim of our study was to examine the weekly prevalence of health problems of postpubertal young elite female footballers during one season.Design Observational prospective studySetting Youth sport, Elite level, FemaleParticipants The study was carried out on 19 elite young women football players (age: 14.5+/-0.77, +1.94+/- 0.63 after PHV) at the Swiss Football Association's girls academy.Intervention During one football season (2022–2023) health problems were monitored using the OSTRC-O2 questionnaire (Clarsen et al. 2020) sent electronically to each player every Sunday evening during 38 weeks. We have divided each players Severity score into 4 Severity score groups: 0=no problem, 1to49=light problem, 50to99=moderate problem, 100=strong problem.Main Outcome Measurements Weekly prevalence of health problems (number of players with severity score > 0 divided by the number of respondents that week)Results Per week, 29.9% (Min 10.6%, Max 52.7%) of the players (=5.7athletes) indicated health problem of which 9.8% were strong (=100). The mean of the Severity Score of injuries over the season was 20.4 (SD+/- 7.6) on 100 per player. The score fluctuated throughout the season (Min 7.4 Max 37.3), and peaked in February, with also higher values at the beginning of the season and at the end of the first half as well as at the end of the season. Conclusions This study shows that health problems that hinder full participation in training are very present at postpubertal elite female soccer players and that they have a seasonal component. It seems necessary to take action (load monitoring, injury prevention strategies,..) to try to reduce the consequences for the performance development of the young female football player.Download figure Open in new tab Download powerpoint Abstract 797 Figure 1