Increased injury rates after the restructure of Germany’s national second league of team handball

Scientific injury data in men's professional team handball injuries are rare and even less scientific information exists on injury prevention. In 2011, Germany's national second team handball league was restructured by merging the existing two regional leagues into one league. This study evaluates the injury patterns in professional team handball and compares the injury rates between the first and second league before and after the restructure. All players of Germany's national first and second men's team handball leagues have mandatory trauma insurance with the same insurance company. This retrospective cohort study analysed the injury data of three consecutive seasons 2010-2013 using standardized injury definitions. 1194 professional team handball players were included in this study. The majority of severe injuries affected the lower extremities, shoulders, and hands. The average injury incidence significantly differed between the first (4.9 injuries per 1000 h) and the second league (3.9 per 1000 h, p < 0.01). The injury incidence in the restructured second league had increased from 3.7 to 4.1 per 1000 h (p < 0.01) and prevalence from 67.1 to 79.3% (p < 0.001), thus almost to the same levels of the first league. The second league showed more time-loss injuries at all severity levels. This study yielded a high injury incidence after the restructure of the national second team handball league and presents details on prevalence, incidence, and patterns of injury in professional men's team handball. This study is an important basis for developing injury prevention strategies that should focus on the shoulders, hands, and lower extremities and on reducing the number of matches and travel burden. III

Neuromuscular exercises prevent severe knee injury in adolescent team handball players

Team handball is associated with a high risk of severe knee injury that needs to be reduced, particularly at the youth level. The purpose of this study was to show how an injury-prevention programme effectively reduces severe knee injury in adolescent team handball players. Of 23 adolescent handball teams of both sexes, 13 were randomly allocated into the intervention group (168 players) and 10 into the control group (111 players). Players of the intervention group regularly participated in an injury-prevention programme for one season. Handball exposure and sustained injuries were documented for both groups on a monthly basis. The primary outcome parameter of the injury-prevention programme was the incidence of severe knee injury. Of the 279 included players, 68 (24%) sustained 82 injuries yielding an overall incidence of 1.85 injuries per 1000 h handball exposure (intervention group: 50 injuries/incidence: 1.90/1000 h; control group: 32 injuries/incidence: 1.78/1000 h). Knee injury was the second most frequent injury in adolescent team handball. The primary outcome parameter, severe knee injury occurred significantly more often in the control group [mean age (SD) 15.1 (1.0), injury incidence 0.33/1000 h] than in the intervention group [mean age (SD) 14.9 (0.9), injury incidence 0.04/1000 h]. The odds ratio was 0.11 (95% CI 0.01-0.90), p = 0.019. Other injuries to the lower extremities showed no significant difference between the two groups. Frequent neuromuscular exercises prevent severe knee injury in adolescent team handball players and should thus be included in the practical routine as well as in the education of team coaches

Globalizations Avant la Lettre: A Comparative View of Isomorphization and Heteromorphization in an Inter-Connecting World a group of fellows of the Wis- senschaftskolleg zu Berlin during two lunch meetings full of verve. Special thanks go to

the standard view The academic world has undoubtedly become smaller in recent decades. Chinese-, Spanish-, English-, Arabic-, French-, Russian-, German-and Italianspeaking academics, intellectuals, and feuilletonists discuss &apos;the end of history&apos; or &apos;the clash of civilizations.&apos; We all seem driven by the cycles of boom and bust that govern the planetary intellectual marketplace. New concepts such as &apos;modernization&apos; or &apos;post-modernity&apos; periodically appear in the centers of academic and political power, then diffuse through mechanisms of persuasion and mimicry, until they become part of mainstream discourse-only to disappear ten or fifteen years later under the impact of other key concepts that come to conquer the minds of a new generation of scholars and intellectuals. Nowadays, such processes of diffusion and convergence are called globalization. Indeed, globalization itself is such a buzz word that seems to have achieved hegemonic status in the social science vocabulary. No global understanding has been reached, however, as to the exact meaning and implications of &apos;globalization.&apos; Considerable debate has evolved, not only about the more obvious economic, but also the political and cultural as

Search for heavy charged particles and for particles with anomalous charge in e+-e- collisions at LEP

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