Pressure Injuries and Skin Structure Changes in Basketball Athletes: Case of Wheelchair Basketball Players in Turkey

Abstract

In the past few years, different measures are being taken by the sports agency to offer new sports for disable athletes to motivate them. In this regard, the wheelchair (WC) basketball has also become very famous especially among the elite basketball players. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to determine the association between pressure injuries (PI) and skin structural changes in basketball players from Turkey. For this purpose, the skin blotting technique was utilized. 13 basketball players were selected for this study and the ultrasonographic images (UI) of their ischial regions were also obtained for qualitative analysis. The results obtained from this study showed that 2 of the 13 participants suffered from category II and III of PIs. The structural features were categorized as normal skin (NS), cloudy fat (CF) layer, deep and unclear superficial (US) fascia and anechoic lesion (AL) and fat infiltration (FI). The levels of CK-M (2.989 [2.81 – 3.48]) in the FI and AL group was higher than the non-FI and AL (1.42 [1.42 – 1.48]) after training (p= 0.04). However, the levels of IL-6 were higher in FI and AL group (23.6 [16.16 – 58.96]) than the non-FI and AL group (1.95 [1.75 – 4.45]) after rest (p= 0.04). Therefore, the combination of UI images, changes in skin structure is crucial to determine the deep tissue damage in WC basketball athletes.