Abstract

Lecture 20

Muscular injuries are very frequent in sport. The epidemiological studies show that muscular injuries represent more than 30% of all injuries (1.8–2.2/1000 h of exposure), which means that a professional football team suffers an average of 12 muscular injuries per season, equivalent to more than 300 lost sporting days.

Despite their high frequency and the interest in finding solutions, there is little scientific evidence on aspects as important as prevention and treatment, we will outline some weak points. Diagnosis of muscular injuries is based on clinical medicine, fundamentally on symptomatology and especially on the anamnesis of the injury mechanism and physical examination. Imaging studies through the musculoskeletal echography and magnetic resonance are complementary studies, despite the fact that they could be increasingly more useful when confirming a diagnosis or especially when giving a prognosis. There is no sufficiently specific biochemical marker available that could help with the diagnosis of the seriousness and the definitive prognosis of each of the different muscular injuries.

Treatment guidelines for muscular injuries do not follow a unique model, despite the fact that the different alternatives have been modified very little. Finally, new expectations have been raised thanks to research within the field of biological repair and regeneration.

Prevention programmes can reduce the incidence of suffering muscular injuries, but scientific evidence is still limited and it has only been possible to verify them in certain groups of sportsmen.

The objective of this talk is to show the diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive approaches that should be taken when faced with the various muscular injuries suffered by the football players of Barcelona football club. The protocols are based on current knowledge from recent years in the daily work of dealing with these types of injuries.