Prevention of sport injury II: A systematic review of clinical science research

Abstract

Objective: To characterise the nature of the sport injury prevention literature by reviewing published articles that evaluate specific clinical interventions designed to reduce sport injury risks. Data sources: PubMed, Cinahl, Web of Science and Embase. Main results: Only 139 of 2525 articles retrieved met the inclusion criteria. Almost 40% were randomized controlled trials and 30.2% were cohort studies. The focus of the study was protective equipment in 41%, training in 32.4%, education in 7.9%, rules and regulations in 4.3%, and 13.3% involved a combination of the above. Equipment research studied stability devices (42.1%), head and face protectors (33.3%), attenuating devices (17.5%) as well as other devices (7%). Training studies often used a combination of interventions (eg, balance and stretching); most included balance and coordination (63.3%), with strength and power (36.7%) and stretching (22.5%) being less common. Almost 70% of the studies examined lower extremity injuries, and a majority of these were joint (non-bone)-ligament injuries. Contact sports were most frequently studied (41.5%), followed by collision (39.8%) and non-contact (20.3%). Conclusion: The authors found only 139 publications in the existing literature that examined interventions designed to prevent sports injury. Of these, the majority investigated equipment or training interventions whereas only 4% focused on changes to the rules and regulations that govern sport. The focus of intervention research is on acute injuries in collision and contact sports whereas only 20% of the studies focused on non-contact sports.