Rugby players have more chronic cervical injuries than men of the same age who have never practiced high-level sport, according to a French study.
“Rugby is one of those sports that leaves a mark on the neck. »An article from Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine looks back at the consequences of this contact sport on the spine. It’s not just the brain that suffers repeated shocks, the top of the spine too. To reach this conclusion, the authors of the Toulouse study recruited 101 retired professional players who are members of the Provale association and 85 healthy volunteers who had never practiced sport at a professional level.
Half of the former rugby players reported suffering from chronic neck pain and having difficulty moving their necks. In the control group, they were only 32%. The intensity of the pain described was similar in the two groups, but on MRI, differences appear. Retired athletes have a narrower spinal canal than others and have more stenosis (narrowing) of the foramen, the hole through which nerve fibers exit the spinal canal. But they have an advantage over non-athletes: the muscles surrounding the spine are more developed. According to the researchers, this could be the result of a pain defense mechanism.
Injuries during a career
However, cervical injuries are more serious when they concern a former rugby player. One of them, a frontline player, suffered from neurological damage and had two operations. Ten underwent surgery for degenerative spine disease – mainly for herniated disc and radiculopathy. In the majority of cases, these procedures occurred during the professional career. This indicates that “spinal surgery does not completely prevent contact sports in professional athletes”, stress the researchers. Such injuries have already been shown in studies smaller size.
“These symptoms are extremely debilitating,” says Dr. David Brauge, the study’s first author. Our final conclusion must be cautious: we still cannot say that these lesions worsen over time or that the disease stabilizes with the cessation of rugby. The particularity of the participants must also be taken into account: this contact sport certainly has more serious consequences for amateur players, who represent the main population at risk.
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