Screening tools for common soccer injuries: a systematic review

Abstract

Background: Soccer is associated with a significant chance of injury either during training or during the course of an actual match. A review of literature shows that soccer injuries occur commonly in the lower extremities, often resulting in extensive downtime of players depending on the severity of the injury. This necessitates the need to investigate injury risk factors for the sake of predicting possible injury occurrences and proactively seeking to prevent them. Although several screening tools exist for the prediction of injury occurrences, the effectiveness of these screening tools in predicting injury to a satisfactory level of accuracy has been questioned. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to conduct a review on common injuries in soccer, risk factors and the accuracy of available screening tools to predict these injuries among soccer players. Methods: A systematic review was performed based on the JBI procedure for conducting systematic reviews. Databases such as SPORT Discus, Cinahl, Medline, Science Direct, PubMed and grey literature were used to access suitable studies. Some of the key terms applied in the perusal of these databases included: soccer injuries or football injuries, injury screening, screening, screening tool accuracy, risk factors, epidemiology, injury incidence, injury prevalence, injury prediction, accuracy, validity, specificity, reliability, sensitivity. Studies dating back to the year 2000 were focused on and only full text articles in English were included. Studies such as observational studies were also included in this review. Data was obtained using a standardized data extraction tool which permitted the extraction of similar information and significant data from the studies under review. The data extracted focused on literature-identified risk factors such as demographic, geographic, social, seasonal and other risk factors. Other factors taken into consideration include: setting/location, dates of survey or intervention, definitions of conditions and populations, inclusion and exclusion criteria, mean age, sex, sample size, statistical methods used to analyse data in the selected studies, and estimates of prevalence and incidence. Analysis: Extracted data was analysed using Stata statistical software, version 15.1. To address heterogeneity in extracted data, the data extracted was analysed using a forest plot. The initial literature search on CINAHL, SPORT Discus, Science Direct, and PubMed, returned more than 26 citations. Incidence rates and odds ratios, as well as sensitivity and specificity were analysed within their respective 95% confidence intervals. The I² statistic was used to determine the proportion of variation across studies. A qualitative analysis was used to synthesize the pooled data from the included studies in this systematic review