Mapping Lacrosse Injury and Sports Medicine Research
Lillian Bosh, Sidhartha Ramlatchan, Omar Viswanath, Latha GantiBackground
Lacrosse research spans orthopedic injury, concussion, prevention, and sports science. This study characterized publication, citation, and collaboration patterns in a search-defined literature.
Methods
Web of Science records exported on July 22, 2026, were analyzed. Of 458 unique retrieved records, 24 clearly out-of-scope records were excluded. The primary corpus required lacrosse in the title, abstract, or author keywords, yielding 388 records. A broader 434-record corpus included additional records linked only through Keywords Plus. Indicators were recalculated from the full-record export.
Results
The primary corpus spanned 1987–2026, contained 141 source-title labels, and accumulated 14,987 citations (mean, 38.63; h-index, 61). Of the records, 235 (60.6%) were dated 2017–2026; 2026 was incomplete. American Journal of Sports Medicine and Journal of Athletic Training each contributed 44 records. Sport Sciences and Orthopedics were assigned to 275 (70.9%) and 120 (30.9%) records, respectively. An explicit USA address label occurred in 343 records (88.4%). Injury, concussion, and epidemiology were the most frequent normalized keywords. The broader sensitivity analysis retained concussion and epidemiology among its leading terms.
Conclusions
This literature connects lacrosse injury research with broader sports medicine and is concentrated in US-affiliated publications. Concussion and epidemiology are prominent, but bibliometric patterns do not establish clinical evidence quality or quantify treatment-related research gaps.