Various injuries often experienced by ballet dancers & bull; hello healthy

Ballet dancers are known for their elegant posture. However, most of them had to suffer various injuries, both minor and serious. Many psychologists try to understand the factors that make professional ballet dancers suffer as serious injuries as athletes. Ronald Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington and also lead author of a study in the journal Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, said that the injury rate for ballet dancers over an eight-month period was 61%. This is proportional to the injury rate for athletes in competing sports, such as football and wrestling.

Research on injuries to ballet dancers

According to a 1988 study published in Sports Med, hip injuries in ballet dancers account for 7-14.2% of all injuries sustained. And snapping hip syndrome accounts for 43.8% of all hip injuries. Knee injuries account for 14-20% and more than 50% are peripatellar and retropatellar problems. This includes synovial plica, medial chondromalacia, lateral patella facet syndrome, subluxing patella, and the fat pad syndrome.

CBI Health Center divides the level of injury to ballet dancers in 3 parts of the body, namely the hands, spine and legs. Injury to the hand is the least common injury, with a percentage of 5-15%, spinal cord injury has a percentage of 10-17%, and the largest injury is foot injury with a percentage of 65-80%.

Various injuries are common to ballet dancers

The following is a variety of information from American Academy of Pediatrics regarding common injuries to ballet and their symptoms:

1. Flexor hallucis longus tendonitis

This is inflammation of the tendon that flexes the big toe. This happens because the tendon is compressed as a result relevé (tiptoe), jump, and pointe. Symptoms include pain, tightness, and weakness along the tendons at the arch or behind the inner ankle.

2. Symptomatic os trigone

This condition indicates that a piece of bone behind the ankle joint is pinched when the big toe applies the support and the ankle is bent downward. The symptoms experienced are pain, tightness, and bruising behind the ankle associated with relevé, pointe, and standing on the big toe.

3. Anterior talar impingement

This is a condition when the soft tissue in front of the ankle is squeezed with the ankle bent upward. Symptoms that occur are pain, tightness, a pinching sensation in front of the ankle due to plié (ballet base position), jumping and landing again.

4. Joint sprains

This condition occurs as a result of a rotating joint (bent inward, and most commonly occurs when the dancer jumps, lands or turns. Symptoms are pain, swelling of the outer ankle, causing instability to move sideways, and sprains are more common. if the dancer has experienced a previous sprain.

5. Stress fracture

The repetitive effects of stress can cause weakness in the bones, often not visible on x-rays. This condition is common in the metatarsals (front leg), tarsals (middle leg), tibia, and fibula, and sometimes it also occurs in the femur, pelvis and spine. The symptoms that will occur are deep and long-lasting bone pain, associated with high levels of impact activity, this is more common in dancers who have calcium or vitamin D deficiency, feeding problems, and irregular periods.

6. Knee shell pain

This is a condition in which the kneecap hurts due to pressure on the knee, caused by bending, plié, and jumping. This can weaken or harden the cartilage behind the knee. The symptom that occurs is pain in the front knee that is exacerbated by bending the knee, plié and jumping.

7. Pelvic injury

Some of the causes for this condition include snapping the tendon against the front or side hip. This is related to hip activity, and it is sometimes caused by the cartilage tearing off the lining of the hip socket, so it is highly unlikely that an injury will result from a dislocation of the hip. You will also feel pain when your hips bend.