Introduction: There has been controversy regarding whether headgear use in women's lacrosse will affect the rate of head and musculoskeletal injuries. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of mandated headgear use on the rate of head and musculoskeletal injuries in high school women's lacrosse.
Methods: This was a prospective cohort study of eight high school women's lacrosse teams and their game op-ponents who were mandated to wear F3137 headgear for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Athletic trainers documented all injuries that occurred as a result of participation on the lacrosse teams. Injury rates in the headgear cohort were compared to a retrospective (control) cohort from the High School Reporting Information Online injury data reports.
Results: Over the study period, 17 total injuries were reported in the headgear cohort during 22,397 exposures for an injury rate of 0.76 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures. The headgear cohort demonstrated significant decreases in rates of in-game head and face injury (RR 0.141, 95% CI [0.004, 0.798]), in-game concussion (RR 0.152, 95% CI [0.004, 0.860]), and practice trunk and extremity injury (RR 0.239, 95% CI [0.049, 0.703]) when compared to the control cohort.
Conclusion: Mandated use of headgear was shown to be effective at lowering the rate of head or face injury and concussions in women's lacrosse. Additionally, mandated headgear use was also shown to lower the rate of injury to body locations other than the head or face during practice. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate a decrease in injury rates associated with ASTM approved headgear in women's lacrosse.