Influência da propulsão em cadeira de rodas na ocorrência de dor e lesão em membros superiores de para atletas: uma revisão narrativa

Abstract

Paralympic sport has grown in the last decades. The knowledge of the modalities, characteristics of parathletes also incresed as well the interest in performance improvement by sports teams and the understanding of factors that may be potential for the occurrence of pain and injuries resulting from sports practice. The Paralympic modalities that use a wheelchair in their practice have the upper limbs as the body part most affected by pain and injuries. The present study aimed to investigate, through a literature review, propulsion factors in sports wheelchairs (biomechanics, kinetics and kinematics) that may be related to the occurrence of injury and/or pain in the upper limbs of parathletes. For this, it was conducted a literature search in the PubMed, PEDro, Scielo and Medline databases using the following keywords: “wheelchair sports propulsion”, “wheelchair sports”, “pain”, “shoulder pain”, “injury” “parathletes” and “paralympic”. The research was limited to English and Portuguese languages and to studies published from 2000 onwards. Three studies were included that investigated propulsion in sports wheelchairs and biomechanical, kinetic and/or kinematic characteristics related to pain and injury to parathletes. It was possible to conclude that characteristics such as holding a racket during propulsion, lack of experience in the sport and repetitive movements are the factors that are most related to pain and injury in athletes who use a wheelchair.