Pickleball injuries, search interest, and participation in the United States, 2014-2023: an ecological time series study

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To describe (1) US emergency department-treated pickleball injury burden and the injury-to-participation measure among total players, with burden among adults aged 60 to 79 years as a descriptive subgroup, and (2) determine whether general internet search interest for "pickleball" is also associated with total pickleball-related injuries. DESIGN: Ecological time series study, United States, 2014 to 2023. DATA SOURCES: National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) emergency department microdata yielded 1,738 adjudicated pickleball cases, 921 of them orthopedic, weighted to an estimated 101,450 injuries nationally. Google Trends, English Wikipedia pageviews, and GDELT news volume served as general pickleball attention signals, with the Trends index for "sourdough" as a negative control. Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) participation estimates supplied a total player denominator. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Annual national injury estimates with design-based 95 percent confidence intervals; injury-to-participation measures; and correlations between total pickleball-related injuries and general pickleball attention signals before and after removing trend and seasonality. RESULTS: Estimated emergency department-treated pickleball injuries rose 17.5-fold, from 1,391 in 2014 (highly unstable) to 24,294 in 2023. 70 percent of adjudicated cases involved adults aged 60 to 79. During 2017-2023, injury estimates rose 4.0-fold and participation rose about 4.4-fold. No temporal trend was detected in the injury-to-participation measure (P=0.59). Search interest looked like an excellent proxy: in annual levels it correlated with total pickleball-related injuries at R=0.96, and Pickleball Wikipedia pageviews at R=0.98. However, so did searches for "sourdough", at R=0.76. Removing trend and seasonality left little (monthly residual R=0.084; year-on-year R=0.28 over 96 months, 2015-2023), and the seasons ran opposite, with injuries peaking in February and searches in July, such that, on 12-month mean profiles, the sourdough negative control fitted the injury season (R=0.96) while pickleball ran against it (R=-0.40). General pickleball search interest and pickleball news coverage remained correlated in year-on-year changes in 2017-2023 (R=0.64), whereas their corresponding correlations with total pickleball-related injuries in 2017-2023 were 0.25 and 0.20. CONCLUSIONS: The absolute burden of emergency department-treated pickleball injury has grown substantially, but the available surveillance data cannot resolve whether the sport has become more hazardous per participant. The observed rise is consistent with growth in exposure alone. The strong correlation between search interest and injury counts was not specific, the association was substantially attenuated after detrending, and the seasonal patterns were opposed. These descriptive results do not establish that search interest can substitute for injury surveillance, and series that rise together should not be assumed to be related.