Associação entre o desempenho no Y Balance Test e lesões de membros inferiores em atletas: revisão da literatura

Abstract

Context: The practice of sports in a competitive environment is constantly followed by risk of injury. Professionals have been trying, for decades, to predict the risk of injuries during the preseason through functional tests. In literature, two functional tests amongst several others have been used to assess the performance of dynamic balance and associate the potential risk of injuries of lower limbs in athletes: The star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) and The Y Balance Test. Objective: Conducting a literature review to specifically analyze the use of the instrumented version of The Y Balance Test when it comes to the athletes performance in the referred exam and its accuracy to predict the risk of injuries on lower limbs without a mechanism of direct trauma. It was accomplished a database research on: Embase, PEDro, Medline, Cocrhane Library, of prospective cohort study, between August 2015 and May 2016. Results: Four articles composed the inclusion criteria. Composite score below 89.6% increased 3.5 times the risk of injury in Football athletes and asymmetry > 4 cm in the PM and ANT direction has been associated to injuries not only in amateur and professional soccer players but also in college athletes from a range of sports. It has not been found any association between lower limbs injury and decreased performance relating to the composite score and asymmetry in the instrumented version of the Y Balance Test in one of the studies. Conclusion: The Y Balance Test has a good accuracy to detect risks of injuries on lower limbs when it is applied to American Football and soccer. The requirements for other sports modalities must not be neglected. Further researches need to be developed about this topic.