IADMS Madrid 2001   [back to the Category]

Analysis of the screening of 1400 dance students   [read the french version]

Author :   Juan Bosco Calvo, MD & al.

Analysis of the screening of 1400 dance students

Juan Bosco Calvo, MD, Raúl Sanz, Rosa Rodríguez, Ana González, Javier Fernández, Department of Morphological Sciences and Surgery, School of Medicine, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain

The subject of our work was to analyze data drawn after a clinical exploration of 1400 dance students of different Spanish dance centers during 8 years. The sample was divided in 4 groups (prepuberty, 46%; puberty, 33%; adolescents, 18%; and adults, 9%).
In every single group, statistics were analyzed for the 16 variables studied. Using ANOVA test, we observed differences between groups for all variables except flexibility of hip adductors. Multiple comparisons were performed for all the significant variables and we found that height, weight, magnitude, and body mass index increase significantly with age. Muscular flexibility of thigh and force of elevation of lower limb have a similar behavior. Length of back in maximum extension increases with age especially during adolescence. Adductor muscles flexibility is similar in all groups.

In the second part of the study, we tried to understand the relationship between every variable and the morpho-structural characteristics of back, pelvis, knee, and foot. Using multiple correlation tests, we found that the 7 to 17 age group shows a great amount of significant correlations. Separating the different groups, we found that the prepuberty and puberty groups show a very similar amount of correlations, but the adolescent group shows fewer correlations among these variables. Dehors, plié, and maximum extension of the back are the variables that show a greater amount of significant correlations.