11.21 Evaluating the protective effect of mouthguard use for concussion in youth ice hockey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective To evaluate the association between mouthguard use and concussion rates in youth ice hockey players (ages 11–18). Design Prospective cohort. Setting Calgary and Edmonton (Canada). Participants Over 5 seasons, 3,330 youth ice hockey players (males and females; 5,356 player-seasons) participated. Assessment of Risk Factors At baseline, participants reported wearing (always/sometimes) or not wearing (never) a mouthguard. Other covariables included participant weight, age group (U13/U15/U18), concussion history (yes/no), position (forward/defense/goalie), and body checking policy (allowed/disallowed). Participation in games/practices (hours) and injury occurrence (concussion and non-concussion) were recorded. Outcome The outcome of interest was suspected/diagnosed concussions each season (concussion definition – 5th International Sport Concussion Consensus). Non-concussion injuries included those with missed participation (time-loss) and/or required medical attention, and were validated by a study therapist. Results Complete-case multivariable mixed-effects negative binomial regression (3,953 player-seasons; 360 player-concussions; 240,008.9 player-hours) adjusted for weight, age group, concussion history, position, body checking policy, and clustered by team was used to estimate incidence rates and incidence rate ratios (IRR). Mouthguard wearers had a 35% lower concussion rate (IRR=0.65, 95%CI:0.49–0.85). A similarly constructed multivariable model examined the rate of any non-concussion injury (below the neck) by mouthguard use status to assess potential confounding of injury rates by protective equipment-related factors. There were no significant differences in the rate of non-concussion injuries (n=370 player non-concussion injuries) by mouthguard use status (IRR=0.96, 95%CI: 0.72–1.29). Conclusions Wearing a mouthguard was associated with significantly lower concussion rates. The results of our study have implications for mouthguard policies in youth ice hockey.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".