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The FIFA concussion protocols outline recommendations for diagnosis and management of concussions in football, one targeted medical staff and one targeted grassroots football.

FIFA website - Suspect &  Protect

FIFA

FIFA Concussion Protocols

The FIFA Emergency Medicine Manual outlines key information on the management of on-pitch emergencies in football.

FIFA Website - FIFA Emergency Medicine Course

FIFA Emergency Medicine Manual

This handbook is targeted at the stakeholders who will be involved in the implementation of medical services at FIFA Youth, Futsal, Beach Soccer and Club World Cups. Tournament medical services include the planning, organisation and delivery of medical care to players, team officials, FIFA officials and staff and spectators.

FIFA Medical Handbook for Youth, Futsal, Beach Soccer, and Club World Cups

The injury spotter manual describes the process of reviewing head impacts and visible signs of potential concussion which is applied in all FIFA football tournaments.

FIFA Injury Spotter Manual

Medical protocol for the teams participating in the CONMEBOL Copa América USA 2024

CONMEBOL

Medical protocol for CONMEBOL Copa América USA 2024

Recommendations to prevent exertional heat stroke in soccer for teams participating in the CONMEBOL Copa América USA 2024

CONMEBOL-Website

Exertional Heat Stroke (EHS) in Soccer: Medical Recommendations

This UEFA guideline will bring together global experts to discuss the current best evidence and make recommendations on menstrual health tracking in football.

Guideline developent protocol

UEFA

Menstrual health tracking recommendations

The overall aim of UEFA’s Heading Guidelines is limiting the header burden in youth football to what is deemed necessary for the promotion of the game. They are intended as a recommendation on how to manage heading during training and match play in youth football and how to introduce heading drills for youth players.

UEFA Website

UEFA Heading guidelines for youth players

The medical section of the Manual outlines the medical requirement in organsing the AFC Competitions with the objectives of providing standardise medical care for players and other stakeholders.

AFC Competitions Operations Manual Edition 2023 - Medical Infrastructure and services across all AFC Competitions

The aim of this consensus is to (i) gather current evidence on prevention and the management of ACL injuries in female football players and (ii) create a centralized reference document on the topic of ACL injuries for female football

Consensus protocol

Consensus on ACL prevention and overall management in female football

Standardized recording of injury and illness by team doctors. Project performed in partnership with Aspetar Sports Medicine Hospital.

Injury and Illness Surveillance for AFC Champions League clubs

A multistep project that aims to create an overview of heading incidence research with a focus on descriptors and definitions and an attempt to create global agreement on these for use in heading research in the future.

Systematic review protocol

Delphi project protocol

Heading in football: descriptors and definitions

The overall purpose of this project is to develop, implement and evaluate an evidence-based football-specific tool for on-pitch concussion assessment.

Development of a standardized football-specific on-pitch concussion assessment

This project contains a series of studies related to women's football. The first is a mixed methods study to explore the barriers and enablers for developing technical skills in women's football (including a quantitative survey and one-on-one interviews with women players and coaches of women and girls). The second part of the project focuses more on heading in football and the role of performance in head injury prevention which also includes a mixed method design as well as a video analysis of heading and head injury events in women's football across a range of ages (completed in association with UEFA Medical).

Technical skills in women’s football

This project aims to utilise existing surveillance datasets in professional football to identify relationships between the match load per season and player health at both team and individual level, bringing together surveillance researchers and data from multiple leagues globally.

Match load and player health in professional football

This project will be investigating heading in football across different levels of the game including youth to adult, amateur and professional as well as males and females. It will contain six separate studies:  1. Literature review to identify descriptors of heading technique.   2. Qualitative analysis of experienced coaches and football players on the key aspects to heading technique.    3.A Delphi study with multiple stakeholders within football to analyse heading technique descriptors.   4.Observational study of heading technique at professional level, to assess heading technique using the descriptors previously agreed upon in study three.   5.Observational study of heading technique at amateur level, to assess heading technique using the descriptors previously agreed upon in study three.       6. The development of a co-designed heading coaching framework with input from medical professionals and experienced football stakeholders including players and coaches.

Heading Technique in Football: the influence of performance on injury prevention

The purpose of this project is to create an open-source, online Heading Research Database to collate and summarise all existing published research on heading in football.

Research database protocol

Creation of a Heading in Football Research Database

This project contains a series of studies which aim to explore the incidence of heading, head impacts, and potential head injury situations in 1) FIFA World Cup tournaments from the 1990s until today comparing men and women, 2) FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, and 3) FIFA Futsal World Cup. The results will hopefully provide insights to headers, head impacts, and potential head injuries which can be used to inform risk mitigation strategies for players’ short and long-term brain health.

Headers, head impacts, and potential head injuries in FIFA organised tournaments including FIFA World Cup matches, beach soccer, and futsal.

The purpose of this project is to explore the incidence and mechanism of potential head injuries caused by the ball (which includes both headers and unintentional ball-to-head contact). To do this, we will use data collected by injury spotters at each FIFA World Cup as well completing a video review to explore the specific mechanism of injury.

Potential head injuries in FIFA World Cup tournaments caused by ball-to-head contact

The purpose of this project is to capture data related to the IFAB additional permanent concussion substitution trial. The specific aims are: 1) To determine the incidence of head trauma and use of concussion substitutions in football competitions that are participating in the IFAB's permanent concussion substitution trial, 2) To evaluate the immediate severity of reported concussion signs and symptoms for football players with a confirmed or suspected concussion, 3) To evaluate the ability of neurocognitive assessments completed post-incident to inform the clinical diagnosis of concussion, and 4) To provide normal concussion assessment references values for use in football.

Research protocol - Concussion incidents

Research protocol - Baseline Reference Values

IFAB Additional Permanent Concussion Substitution Trial

The purpose of this project is to provide cardiac screening recommendations for youth football globally. A Delphi project including a literature review, formulation of recommendations, and a structured voting process on key statements, is carried out with a global expert panel consisting of paediatric cardiologists, sports cardiologists, and team physicians.

Cardiac screening recommendations for youth football players

FIFA officially launched a worldwide Sudden Death Registry  in January 2014. The aim of this registry (FIFA-SDR) is to detect the frequency of sudden arrest/death during football and to identify their causes as precisely as possible. Thus, existing screening and preventive measures will be improved or supplemented to help to prevent some of these deaths in the future. The research and management of the registry is carried out by Saarland University in Germany.

FIFA-SCD website

FIFA Sudden Death Registry

Surveillance of injuries and illnesses occurring among players at all FIFA tournaments. Details are recorded by team medical staff. Information collected includes injury location, type and circumstances, illness type (including mental health problems), and the resulting amount of time for which the players are unable to participate in football. Each team also records the amount of training and match play completed by each player during the tournament period.

Player health surveillance at FIFA tournaments

This project aims to create and maintain an overview of all player health surveillance activities in football globally. An initial survey was conducted in February-April 2024 to collect information on surveillance activities in football, including the population (e.g., men’s or women’s football, youth and/or adult, level of competition), time frame, type of data collected, and data collection method. Connections with other surveillance-related organizations were also identified. The survey was distributed by e-mail to all confederations and FIFA member associations. It was also openly available online and advertised on social media and at football medicine conferences.  Following the survey, a snowball approach has been used to contact organisations that were cited as partners by survey respondents, as well as organisations known to the research group.

FIFA Global Player Health Surveillance Stakeholder Mapping

This project involves a comprehensive systematic review on injury and illness epidemiology in football. Previous reviews of this topic have focused on specific competitive levels (e.g., professional) and are sex specific. This review will encompassing professional and amateur players, sex playing categories, beach soccer and futsal, as well as para football. By synthesising evidence across various demographics and disciplines, our review aims to provide a more encompassing understanding of injury and illness patterns in football. Moreover, currently available reviews only include evidence up to 2018. By adopting a living review approach, continuously updating our synthesis, we will ensure that our findings reflect the latest evidence, enhancing their relevance and applicability to contemporary football contexts.

Descriptive epidemiology of injury and illness in football, futsal, beach soccer, and para football -  A living systematic review

The aim of this project is to create a comprehensive compendium for implementing player health surveillance in professional football, including a step-by-step framework, electronic tools, study manuals, report templates, and other practical materials. The project will draw on the experience of a large group of experts identified through FIFA’s Global Player Health Surveillance Mapping Project. The expert group will identify the guidance and tools necessary for surveillance implementation in a range of professional football contexts, then develop and refine the compendium through an iterative Delphi process.

Implementing player health surveillance in football: A Delphi study

The project aims to use video footage to review and analyse all head impacts occuring in FIFA tournaments with a focus on mechanisms and visble signs of conussion in football using a standardized approaches with continous development to improve relevance and implementation in football.

Research protocol - FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

Visible signs of concussion in football

The aims of this study are to identify current practices and differences across countries in football-specific concussion protocols and to reflect on the ethical considerations related to the development of concussion protocols that can safeguard player health and balance public health responsibilities with the athlete's automnomy, needs, and preferences. The research is carried out through KU Leuven Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law within the Dotoral Training Network in Sports Ethics and Integrity (DAiSi)

Developing ethical guidelines for return-to-play after a concussion in football

The aim of this project is to be able to analyse situations where players might be at higher risk of injury during matches using a standardized approach to detect and analyse injury inciting circumstances. This is achieved through the development of a medical coding in addition to the FIFA football language, which is applied to all FIFA football tournaments.

Research protocol: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

Potential injuries in football - Medical coding and the FIFA Football language

The aim of this project is to develop expert-based, patient-specific, globally applicable practical clinical recommendations on the surgical management of knee cartilage injuries in football players using the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method. The project is carried out as a collaboration between International Cartilage Regeneration & Joint Preservation Society, FIFA, and Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital.

Consensus protocol dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.j8nlkwxd1l5r/v1

Consensus on the surgical management of knee cartilage injuries in football players

The aim of this study is to identify key aspects for successful player health surveillance implementation in football leagues and tournaments, as well as potential barriers and facilitators. This will be a Delphi study involving surveillance leaders identified through FIFA's Global Player Health Surveillance Stakeholder Mapping project.

Health-related guidelines and medical research projects