Injuries in elite athletes of beach handball

Beach handball is a growing sport without available scientific data on the type of injuries that occur. The aim of this study is to record the incidence rate, type and severity of injuries in this sport. During the finals of the European Beach Tour 2014, 122 beach handball players completed a self – report questionnaire about the injuries they had sustained during the previous 24 months. The injury incidence rate for male and female was 12/1000h and 11.36/1000h respectively during games, and 1.8/1000h and 4/1000h during training accordingly. Muscle strains were the most common type of injury, while the majority of injuries affected the knee. The return to sports period was within 2 weeks from injury for 62% of male and 64.5% of female athletes. Statistical analysis could not correlate the incidence or severity of injuries in beach handball to any of the analyzed variables. This study showed that injuries in beach handball are similar to team handball, rather than to other “sand” sports