| search by category |
One-year follow-up surveys of Japanese ballet dancers and their injury ?The Road of Japanese Association for Dance Medicine and Science (JADMS) 2?
Mayumi Kuno-Mizumura, PhD; Yuko Otake, PT; Aki Mori, MS; Sakiko Suzuki, MS; Yuka Nagashima, BA, Ochanomizu University; and Shinji Mizumura, MS, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
While sports medicine and science have been wildly accepted by professional athletes in Japan, there has been no such case for dancers. From last year, our laboratory has just started the cooperative activity for the company members of Tokyo city Ballet. We have also started the small working group consisted by the Japanese medical or scientific persons who are interested in dancers health to establish Japanese association for dance medicine and science (JADMS).
The purpose of this study was to investigate the injury history caused by dancing in Tokyo city Ballet company and their behavior to prevent injury. In addition, we also discuss about the possible activity by JADMS through our small meetings. .
The subjects were 26 female Japanese ballet dancers of Tokyo City Ballet Company (10 from the first group and 16 from the second group) with a mean age of 23.0. All subjects answered questionnaire about injury history, present and past exercise experience, and their behavior towards their injury or injury prevention.
20 dancers had injury history in the past. The most common injury is ankle sprain (50% of total injury). During last one year, 8 dancers got injured and seven of them were members of the first group. Only 8 dancers have performed regular exercise training except dance classes. Ten dancers were regularly smoking and drinking alcohols. Most of them do warm-up exercise, though most of them do not perform cool-down after classes or rehearsals.
The results of this study demonstrated that Japanese dancers showed similar tendency in the type of injury, however their attitude or knowledge to prevent injury was rather poor at the present. We are now doing seasonal medical/scientific screening testing for young members of our subjects to feedback their health and physical fitness status to raise their awareness about the importance of health care to prevent injuries and improve their performance/activities