A 6-year surveillance study of “Stingers” in NCAA American Football

This study describes the epidemiology of "stinger" injuries in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's Football. About 57 NCAA Men's Football programmes provided 153 team-seasons of injury data to the NCAA Injury Surveillance Programme (NCAA-ISP) during the 2009/2010-2014/2015 academic years. In the study period, 229 "stingers" were reported for an injury rate of 2.04/10,000 athlete-exposures (AE). Most "stingers" were reported during competitions (55.5%) and the preseason (80.3%) and resulted in time loss less than 24 hours (63.8%). One in five (18.8%) were recurrent. Most "stingers" were due to player contact (93.0%), particularly while tackling (36.7%) and blocking (25.8%) and occurred to defensive ends/linebackers (25.8%) and offensive linemen (23.6%). Although previous research reports a large prevalence of "stingers" among football players, the NCAA-ISP reported a relatively low injury rate. The transient nature of pain associated with "stingers" may have contributed to under-reporting, highlighting the need to deduce manners to increase reporting.