Why are female soccer players experiencing a concussion more often than their male counterparts? A scoping review

Abstract

Background: The risk of concussion is particularly high in female soccer players. There is no consensus as to why female soccer players are at an elevated risk.

Objective: To synthesise current evidence investigating reasons for the increased concussion rate in female soccer players.

Sources: Searching of six databases (MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL, SportDiscus, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library) and grey literature was performed between 13/07/2020-31/07/2020. Keywords were concussion-related terms, terms relating to female football/soccer and terms relating to the mechanism/cause. No constraints were placed on publication date and quantitative or exploratory studies meeting inclusion criteria were eligible. Exclusion criteria were studies not published in English and qualitative studies.

Results: Several hypotheses were identified to explain increased concussion rates in female soccer players, these include, reduced neck strength/anthropometrics, increased head acceleration, increased ball-to-head concussions, differences in hormones and brain structure/function, and reduced visual awareness.

Conclusion: Promising ideas/reasons have been identified for increased concussion rates in female soccer players. Despite hypothesis generation there is scarce high-level evidence which is required to guide injury prevention and/or rule changes to protect female soccer players. The level of evidence for included studies is level 2-3 with most being observational cross-sectional or cohort studies.

Keywords: Concussion rate; Female; Head acceleration; Neck strength.