BACKGROUND
Leading a physically active lifestyle and participating in sport are associated with many health benefits spanning physical, cognitive, and psychological/emotional domains. However, many features of well-established sports (e.g., high-speed running, landing from a jump, quickly changing direction, tackling) expose athletes to a risk of sustaining sudden-onset injuries. Because acute sports injuries can cause short-to-long-term physical impairment and functional disability, and lead to substantial healthcare and economic costs, identifying and implementing effective intervention strategies that protect athlete health and ensure safe participation in sports is imperative.
An increasingly large body of evidence on sports injury prevention strategies has emerged over the past two decades.[69,70]Such proliferation of injury prevention research has resulted in a swell of evidence syntheses to systematically appraise, synthesise, and interpret both pre-existing and newly emerging literature. By systematically mapping the quality of evidence, quantifying the preventive effect of intervention strategies, and identifying gaps for future research, rigorously performed evidence syntheses possess substantial value to inform clinical and preventive sports injury practice.
STUDY AIM
The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to
1. perform a baseline systematic review that:
categorises sudden-onset sports injury prevention strategies by the (i) timing of its effect relative to when the injury event/mechanism occurs (i.e., pre-event, event, post-event) and (ii) target of its effect (i.e., athlete, kinetic energy, environment);
evaluates the pooled efficacy (i.e., interventions tested under highly controlled conditions) and effectiveness (i.e., intervention tested under pragmatic, ‘real-world’ conditions) of sports injury prevention strategies, and;
identifies priority areas for future design and implementation of sudden-onset sports injury prevention strategies.
2. transition to a living systematic review that:
continually monitors emerging evidence on sports injury prevention strategies, and;
incorporates relevant evidence on sports injury prevention strategies into review conclusions at regular fixed time intervals.