Youth American football quarterback injuries: a descriptive study of 15 years of retrospective data

Objectives: To describe common injuries of youth American football quarterbacks (QBs) cared for in a regional sports medicine center within the last 15 years. Methods: A retrospective chart review of all male youth American football QB patients who sustained sports-related injuries at a regional pediatric medical center between 01/01/2003 and 10/01/2018. Patients were identified using HoundDog to search the term 'quarterback.' Records were then reviewed to identify all male QBs <= 18 years of age. Injures that were not a result of football participation were excluded. Main outcome variables were injured anatomic locations, injury types, surgical status, and settings in which the injury was sustained. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the outcome variables. Results: A total of 374 QBs (mean age: 14.6 +/- 2.1) sustained a total of 423 injuries. The top 5 injured anatomic locations were shoulder (22%), knee (15%) head/neck (14%), elbow (13%), and wrist/hand/lower arm (11%). Most injuries (64.3%) were acute; 35.7% were chronic in nature. Most acute injuries (55.5%) occurred during games. Of the chronic injuries, 47.0% occurred during off-season and 34.4% occurred in-season. Among all injuries, 22.9% were surgical cases, and the top 3 anatomic locations of surgery were knee (35.0%), shoulder (20.7%), and elbow (18.7%). Conclusions: The shoulder is the most commonly injured body part among young QBs seeking care in a regional pediatric medical center, although the knee is the most commonly injured body part that requires surgery. Most QB injuries are acute in mechanism and the majority of these acute injuries occur during games.