A profile of patients attending sports medicine clinics.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To describe the sociodemographic profile of sports injury patients who attend sports medicine clinics for treatment and to describe their reasons for choosing to attend such clinics. METHOD: Data were collected as part of a fully audited injury surveillance system implemented within sports medicine clinics. The study was conducted within five allied multidisciplinary sports medicine clinics in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. All patients initially presenting for treatment of a new sports or active recreation injury over the period August 1997 to August 1998 were eligible for this study, irrespective of the practitioner providing the treatment. Data were obtained on 6476 patien..