Rapid Fire Australian Epidemiology Association ASM 2018

What can existing data tell us about Australian sport fatalities? (#133)

Lauren V Fortington 1 , Kristen L Kucera 2 , Caroline F Finch 3
  1. Australian Centre for Research into Injury in Sport and its Prevention, Ballarat Central, VICTORIA, Australia
  2. National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, Department of Exercise and Sport Science , University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA
  3. School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia

Changes to the physical and social environments in which sport is played, together with recent high-profile cases of death and other adverse events, have brought sport safety to the public's attention. Every serious and fatal event offers the potential to learn and ensure such events do not continue to happen. However, before prevention opportunities can be realised, an understanding of the number of fatalities and how they occur is required. These data are not routinely reported on by a central source in Australia. This study aimed to catalogue existing datasets relevant to Australian sport fatalities and evaluate the presence and consistency of eight recommended core data items from Australian and international fatality surveillance guidelines. Focusing on Australian football and cricket, from 2000 onwards, data were sourced from: National Coronial Information System, sports injury insurance providers, hospital separations, online news media and sports-specific registries. The datasets use different time frames and definitions. The proportion of data items complete is presented, with text descriptors. There were between 1 to 71 Australian football fatalities identified and 0 to 174 cricket fatalities identified. Demographic (age, sex) and broad case information (state, date of death, place) were consistently presented. The sport and activity related data were more varied, with data missing or incomplete as well as providing insufficient detail to use for sport-specific analysis. Data on sport-related fatalities are currently collected across a wide variety of data sources with varied quality which impacts on the ability to identify, learn from and capitalise on prevention opportunities.