Acute injuries are categorized as which?

• A. Secondary and Primary
• B. Contact and non-contact
• C. Acute and Chronic
• D. Soft tissue and hard tissue

Answer: (B)

Acute injuries are classified by how they occur, focusing on mechanism. They’re split into contact injuries, where the injury results from a direct external force such as a blow or collision, and non-contact injuries, which happen without direct contact and often arise from poor mechanics, sudden movements, or overload. This distinction helps explain why an ACL tear might happen during a quick change of direction (non-contact) versus a bruise from a direct hit (contact).

Other options mix time-based or tissue-based ideas that don’t capture the mechanism of an acute event as clearly. Acute vs chronic speaks to duration, not how the injury happened. Soft tissue vs hard tissue describes the tissue involved, not the mechanism. Primary vs secondary doesn’t describe this classification either. The best fit is the mechanism-based split into contact and non-contact.