Frequência de lesões de membros inferiores em praticantes de futebol amador

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to survey, through a review of the literature, the frequency of lower limb injuries in amateur soccer players. Methods: It was performed a search on the databases MEDLINE (PUBMED), LILACS and SciELO using the combination of the following keyword and or subject heading: incidence of injury, frequency of injury, soccer player, amateur soccer, and their correlates in Portuguese. The selected articles should investigate men of any age which were amateur or recreational soccer players and the outcome of the study should be the frequency of the lower limb injuries in this population. There were excluded studies which used any kind of intervention or investigate other kind of soccer as well as studies which investigated amateur and professional athletes together, but did not reported the data separately. There was no restriction on language and publication date of the articles. The following data were extracted from the articles: sample size, age, number of recorded injuries, injury severity and/or length of absence from work due to injury, anatomic location and type of injuries. Results: The search yielded 240 articles, however, only seven met the inclusion criteria of this study and therefore were included. A total of 1,147 injuries were recorded, and the anatomical location that suffered injuries more often were the ankle, knee, and thigh, respectively. Sprain was the most common type of injury, followed by muscle strain and contusion. Conclusions: The types of injury and the anatomical locations most affected in amateur soccer players were reported in this review. This information could be used for planning prevention programs. It was difficult to make comparisons of the results due to different definitions of injury and methodology used in the studies. It is necessary to standardize the investigated variables so that it would be easier to understand the condition and frequency of injury in amateur soccer players.