Manejo de dor em atletas: uma revisão integrativa.

Abstract

Introduction: Pain is a complex phenomenon that requires recognition of multiple factors, considered as a common problem among high-performance athletes, and is often associated with sports injuries. The appearance of pain in athletes is also multifactorial and may be related to disorders caused by trauma resulting for minimal changes in the precision of movements or sustained postures commonly seen in the sports context. Bad conduct of rehabilitation of an athlete with pain can result not only in the application of resources without any scientific plausibility, but also in the worsening and aggravation of the situation in question. Objective: To conduct an integrative literature review on pain management in high-performance athletes. Methods: Open access studies indexed in the Pubmed, Scielo and Pedro databases were analyzed. The terms used for research were “athletes”, “management” and “pain” in different combinations. Were included studies that addressed the treatment of pain in high-performance athletes of any age, gender and sport modality as long as they carried out their activity in a systematic way. In addition, studies should be published in Portuguese or English, available online and published from January 2012 to June 2022. All studies that were not freely accessible on the internet, purely qualitative studies and case reports were excluded. Articles were excluded by reading the titles and abstracts of each publication. Results: Thirty-one articles were obtained for analysis of titles and abstracts. Eleven articles were fully analyzed, including the following items: author(s), year of publication, sample characteristics (athletes in which sport and age group), pain assessment strategy used, pain management resources used and results. Conclusion: Considering the diversity of present strategies, this study could not determine a single comprehensive management strategy that is paramount in the treatment of pain in elite athletes. Some strategies must be analyzed separately according to personal factors that the athlete presents.