Abstract
Objectives
To determine age-matched death rates of current and retired elite male Australian
football players (Australian and/or Victorian Football League) with the general population.
Design
Analysis of publicly-available birth, debut and death data for all Australian Victorian
Football/Victorian Football League players who debuted prior to (and were still alive
at) the start of 1971 or debuted 1971–2020.
Methods
Wikipedia was used to source the dates of death (or record that the player was alive
in 2021) for the cohort. New players became part of the cohort for analysis on debut
and existing cohort members left it at death. Actual death rates (per year and per
decade) were then compared to expected deaths, based on age-specific population death
rates.
Results
There were 5400 players and ex-players in the cohort at the start of 1971 (average
age 47.3) and a further 4532 players debuted between 1971 and 2020 inclusive (a total
of 9932 players). The expected deaths for the cohort in this 50-year period were 4955,
but only 3914 deaths occurred (Standardized Mortality Ratio 0.79, 95 %CI 0.76–0.82).
For younger members of the cohort (age <50) the discrepancy between expected (222)
and actual (98) deaths was also significant (Standardized Mortality Ratio 0.44, 95 %CI
0.35–0.56).
Conclusions
We conclude that the death rates of elite male Australian footballers are lower than
the reference general population, similar to other studies of elite athletes. Some
of this may be explained by “healthy cohort” selection bias, a limitation which affects
almost all studies in this genre.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 08, 2022
Accepted:
August 6,
2022
Received in revised form:
August 4,
2022
Received:
April 9,
2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
