Published in a peer-reviewed journalSystematic review or meta-analysis

Injuries in Mixed Martial Arts After Adoption of the Unified Rules of MMA

A Systematic Review

Vilius Zachovajevas, Lars Engebretsen, Gilbert Moatshe, Pavelas Zachovajevas, Olav Røise. 2025. Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine.

Read the full textDOI 10.1177/23259671251342578PubMed 40620723

The medical question

Which injuries occur in fighters, and where does medical care need stronger evidence?

Injury surveillance helps the Fight Medicine Research Institute identify questions for prevention, assessment and emergency care. The injuries counted, exposure definition and follow-up period matter when comparing medical risk between settings.

Summary

The review examined injury rates, anatomical sites and injury types in MMA literature after adoption of the Unified Rules.

What the abstract reports

  • 43 reports were included. They varied widely in design, injury definitions and data collection.
  • After adoption of the Unified Rules, competition injury rates ranged from 23.6 to 54.5 per 100 athlete-exposures. Soft tissue injuries were the most common type and the head and neck the most common location.
  • Reported concussion rates ranged from 14.7 to 16.1 per 100 athlete-exposures. The authors report that injury rates and types appear similar to those before the Unified Rules.

Publication status and notices

Published in a peer-reviewed journal. Systematic review in Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine. PubMed publication type: Journal Article; Review.

No correction, retraction or expression of concern was found in PubMed, Crossref or Scite when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

Article details

Relationship
External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.
Published online
4 July 2025
Issue date
July 2025, volume 13, issue 7
Repository date
4 July 2025 (Europe PMC first-publication date)
Date used here
4 July 2025 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)
Rights
CC BY 4.0. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0), as recorded by Europe PMC and the licence link in the source record. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No abstract text, figure or table from the article is reproduced here. Licence terms.
Source check
, against PubMed (NCBI), Crossref, Europe PMC and Scite. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.
Appraisal
The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.
Clinical review
None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.
Funding and conflicts
See the source record for the authors’ funding and disclosures.
Catalog
FH-017, added

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

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