Artistic gymnastics is a physically demanding sport, with both female and male gymnasts competing on a diverse set of events. Women compete on vault, bars, beam and floor [1], while men compete on floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, and the horizontal bar [2]. Successful participation in these events requires a combination of coordination, strength, power, speed, and flexibility [3,4]. Gymnastics is a challenging sport that carries a substantial injury risk. For instance, the window for correct release parameters and successful dismount from the men's high bar has been reported to be ∼73–84 milliseconds [5]. Another more well-known example is the phenomenon of losing air space awareness while twisting (colloquially referred to as “the twisties”), experienced by Simone Biles during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, can render a gymnast unable to land a twisting maneuver properly [6]. As such, it is unsurprising that artistic gymnasts experience high rates of injury.

In comparison with all other NCAA sports, women's gymnastics was found to have the fourth-highest injury rate at practices and competitions [4]. Another study reported injury rates in women's gymnastics were higher than in men's football, and behind only men's wrestling [7]. While gymnastics injuries affect the head and neck infrequently compared to other body parts [4,8,9], trauma to this region may drastically impact quality of life [10].

Recent studies have focused on characterizing head and neck injuries in this athlete population [9,11]. Chorney et al. who studied all maxillofacial injuries among NCAA athletes between 2004 and 2014 reported that gymnastics had one of the lowest overall rate of maxillofacial injuries per 10,000 athlete events during that time [9]. While Bayllis et al.,who interviewed 98 gymnasts regarding maxillofacial injuries, reported that the majority of injuries occurred during training and the severity of the injury was strongly associated with the skill level of the gymnast [11]. However, no study to date has comprehensively characterized nationwide emergent gymnastics-related head and neck injuries.

Data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) [12] has been used to characterize emergent head and neck injuries in other sports [[13], [14], [15], [16]]. This study aims to query the NEISS database to understand the characteristics of head and neck trauma in gymnastics with the goal of providing data that can be used to aid providers, coaches, and guardians who care for gymnasts and may help inform future guidelines for treatment and injury prevention.