Professor Jan Ekstrand on injuries comparing synthetic turf to natural turf

As Synthetic Turf increases in both the professional and amateur game throughout Europe, ESTO emphasizes the important medical journal led by Professor Jan Ekstrand on injuries comparing synthetic turf to natural grass.
As far as we know, there are only three studies that have analyzed the risk of injury when playing football on the third generation of artificial turf pitches compared to the risk when playing on natural grass (Ekstrand et al., 2006; Fuller et al., 2007,a,b; Steffen et al., 2007). All these studies found that there were no major differences in the overall injury risk between the two surfaces, neither in training nor in matches, neither in men nor in women and neither at adult elite level nor at amateur youth level. From a medical point of view, there was no contraindication to expansion of artificial turf technology. 
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