Injury incidence and severity in pre-professional musical theatre dancers: a 5-year prospective study

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Thieme in International Journal of Sports Medicine, available online at: https://www.thieme-connect.de/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/a-1393-6151 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published versionDance injury research has mainly focused on ballet and modern dance with little data on musical theatre dancers. The purpose was to assess the incidence and severity of injuries in a musical theatre dance college over a 5-year period; 198 pre-professional musical theatre dancers (3 cohorts on a 3-year training course) volunteered for the study; 21 students left the course over the study period. Injury aetiology data were collected by an in-house physiotherapy team. Differences between academic year and sex were analysed using a Poisson distribution model; significant difference was set at p≤0.05. In total 913 injuries were recorded, more injuries occurred in academic year 1 than year 2 and 3. Overall injury incidence was 1.46 injuries per 1000 hours (95%CI 1.34, 1.56); incidence significantly decreased between year 1, 2 and 3 (p