In soccer, exercise-based prevention programs are effective at reducing the number of non-contact injuries, according to a new study.
Exercise-based Prevention Programs Reduce Non-Contact Injuries
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Secondary#soccer#exercisebasedpreventionprogram#noncontactmusculoskeletalinjuries
In “Do exercise-based prevention programmes reduce non-contact musculoskeletal injuries in football (soccer)? A systematic review and meta-analysis with 13, 355 athletes and more than 1 million exposure hours,” published on May 17, 2021 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials on exercise-based prevention programs.
“The aim of this systematic review was to investigate the effect of exercise-based programs in the prevention of non-contact musculoskeletal injuries among football players in comparison to a control group,” they wrote.
Ten original randomized controlled trials with 13,355 soccer players were identified through a search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CINAHL, PEDro and SPORTDiscus databases through January 2021.
Studies were eligible for the review if they included football players aged 13 years or older. Exercise-based programs were used as the intervention and the number of non-contact musculoskeletal injuries were reported as well as the exposure hours for each arm of the trial. A non-contact injury was defined as any acute sudden onset musculoskeletal injury that occurred without any physical contact.
All the trials must also have a control group. Risk for bias for each study and overall quality of evidence for the meta-analysis were also calculated.
Overall, there were 1,062,711 hours of exposure. The pooled injury risk ratio showed that exercise-based prevention programs reduced the risk of non-contact injuries by 23% [0.77 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.97) compared with the control group, but the evidence was rated as low-quality.
“Exercise-based prevention programs may reduce the risk of non-contact musculoskeletal injuries by 23% among football players. Future high quality trials are still needed to clarify the role of exercise-based programs in preventing non-contact musculoskeletal injuries among football players,” the researchers wrote.
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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