Lacrosse injuries, as the medical studies name them.

Reading the figures

The rates below come from different surveillance systems, periods and injury definitions. Some count per 1,000 athletic exposures and some per 10,000. Figures from one study cannot be compared directly with another's. Men's and women's lacrosse, and boys' and girls', are separate games with separate rules, and their data are kept apart here.

US college: the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program, 2014-15 to 2018-19

Two companion papers in the Journal of Athletic Training (2021) analysed five seasons of NCAA data, one for men's lacrosse (D'Alonzo, Bretzin, Chandran and colleagues) and one for women's (Bretzin, D'Alonzo, Chandran and colleagues). A search summary of the programme's methods paper describes it as a convenience sample of teams in which athletic trainers record exposures and injuries, counting injuries from organised practice or competition that needed medical attention; that methods paper was not opened.

• Men's. The authors concluded that the burden of concussion and lower-limb injuries warrants further attention.
• Women's. Division III had the highest injury rate. The authors said the share of player-contact injuries is notable because the women's rules limit contact. The paper did not separate stick contact from other equipment contact.
• A figure reported two ways in one paper. The women's study's table gives a 95 percent confidence interval of 4.73 to 5.25 for the overall rate, while its text gives a lower bound of 4.33.

US high school: High School RIO

2008-09 to 2011-12

A study by Xiang, Collins, Liu, McKenzie and Comstock in the American Journal of Sports Medicine (published online July 2014) used High School RIO, which collects reports from certified athletic trainers across the US. As Nationwide Children's Hospital summarised it:

• Over four academic years the study recorded 1,406 injuries, a rate of 20 per 10,000 competitions and practices. Boys sustained 67 percent of the injuries and had a higher rate than girls.
• Sprains and strains were the most common diagnosis (38 percent) and concussion the second (over 22 percent); concussions made up about 22 percent of boys' injuries and 23 percent of girls'.
• In boys' lacrosse, contact between players caused 74 percent of concussions and 41 percent of all injuries.
• In girls' lacrosse, about 25 percent of concussions came from contact between players and 63 percent from being struck by a stick or ball.
• Injury rates were higher in competition than in practice for both boys and girls.
• The researchers recommended enforcing rules that limit player-to-player contact in both games and having emergency action plans in place.

2008-09 to 2018-19

Comstock and colleagues (Injury Epidemiology, 2020) used eleven years of High School RIO data and found concussion rates of 4.66 per 10,000 exposures in boys' lacrosse and 3.91 in girls'. Stick or ball contact caused 72.7 percent of girls' concussions against 23.5 percent of boys'. That study is discussed further on the headgear debate.

Figures that could not be confirmed

• Other high school studies were reported, in search summaries, with different overall rates: boys 2.89 and girls 2.54 per 1,000 exposures in one lacrosse-specific surveillance study, and boys 2.26 and girls 1.54 per 1,000 in a study attributed to McKenzie and colleagues. They used different systems and definitions, and neither was opened.
• USA Lacrosse said in October 2021 that the most recent NFHS injury study showed girls' lacrosse concussion rates holding steady while rising significantly in other sports. The NFHS study itself was not found.
• NBC New York reported in February 2020 that national high school surveillance placed girls' lacrosse among the top three girls' sports for concussion rate, behind soccer and level with basketball. The underlying report was not read.

Head, face and eye injuries

Lincoln and colleagues (American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2007) found higher head, face and eye injury rates in girls' and women's lacrosse than in boys' and men's at both high school and college level. For boys and men the main head and face injury was concussion, mostly from body contact; for girls and women it was contusion, mostly from incidental stick or ball contact. The figures and the eyewear rule that followed are on eye injuries and the eyewear rule.

International play

Cheney and colleagues (Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 2021) studied men's lacrosse at the 2018 world championship: 1,019 athletes in 170 games over 11 days. They recorded 140 injuries, 19.6 per 1,000 athlete exposures. Contact caused 70.7 percent, contusions were the most common type (29.3 percent), and four injuries needed a hospital visit. Like the US figures, this rate comes from its own system and definitions and cannot be compared directly with them.

World Lacrosse's health and safety page links injury epidemiology reports from its 2010 and 2018 world championships, a 2024 surveillance study and an injury reporting sheet. USA Lacrosse's health and safety page points to the Datalys Center's high school annual injury reports and the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program as research sources. Those reports were not read for this site beyond the studies named above.

Catastrophic injuries, which are counted by different systems, are on deaths as published.