This time a completely different type of manuscript. Evert Verhagen was involved with the birth of this methodological paper, which was was the product of a fruitful international collaboration. Physical activity is beneficial for many aspects of health but is associated with a risk of injury. Studies that assess causal risk factors of injury and reinjury provide valuable information to help develop and improve injury prevention programs. However, the underlying assumptions of analytical approaches often used to estimate causal factors in injury and subsequent injury research are often violated. This means that ineffective or even harmful interventions could be proposed because the underlying analyses produced unreliable or invalid causal effect estimates. This manuscript describes an adapted version of the multistate framework (M-FASIS) that makes investigator choices more transparent with respect to outcome and healing time. In addition, M-FASIS incorporates all previous sport injury analytical frameworks and accounts for injuries or conditions that heal or do not heal to 100%, acute and overuse injuries, illnesses, and competing event outcomes.
Shrier I, Steele RJ, Zhao M, Naimi A, Verhagen E, Stovitz SD, et al. A multistate framework for the analysis of subsequent injury in sport (M-FASIS). Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2015