The Combatant Health Center

Similar to soldiers in armed forces around the world most of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldier’s injuries are musculoskeletal (MSK) injuries. These injuries are attributed to trauma (i.e sprains and strains) and overuse injuries. The most common mechanisms causing overuse injuries are repetitive movements that include loading or ground reaction forces such as running, marching and carrying heavy loads.

The most common conditions for which soldiers seek medical care are MSK injuries. They are the main cause of damage to soldiers` fitness; training day loss; disqualification from combat service and ultimately they compromise army readiness. In addition, they cause great suffering, temporary limitations in function and can cause complications that lead to permanent disability.

MSK injury prevention is complex and demands an in-depth multidisciplinary approach. One of the most effective preventions is identifying soldiers with significant risk factors and decreasing these risk factor in order to reduce the risk for injury. Finding these risk factors that predict MSK injury is challenging, yet crucial for forming safe and effective individual training plans. The combatant health center collects data on MSK injuries in soldiers in order to identify injury risk factors. Using these identified predictive factors, each new combat soldier is profiled and an individual training protocol is created that aims to minimize MSK injuries.

The information gathered by the Combatant health center is used for research in promoting health, well being and a better understanding of ideal combat training protocols.