The Non-injured Leg Can Be Used as a Reference for the Injured Leg in Single-legged Hop Tests.
Astrid Vereijken, Emiel van Trijffel, Inne Aerts and 3 others
PMID 34386284WHAT IT FOUND
The non-injured leg performed like the healthy leg in hop tests, so it can be used as a reference when deciding return to high-impact sports.
The injured leg performed worse on some hops, but those differences were small.
Key findings
01The non-injured leg of returning athletes performed similarly to the matched healthy leg, with effect sizes from 0.05 to 0.14.
02The injured leg performed worse than the matched healthy leg on all hop tests, with significant small differences for triple hop, crossover hop, and 30 seconds side hop.
03The injured-to-non-injured score was lower for single hop, triple hop, and 30 seconds side hop, but not for crossover hop or vertical jump.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Physical therapists selected athletes rather than using consecutive or random sampling. Returning athletes may have already practiced the hop tests during rehabilitation, which could make their scores look better than they would in someone new to the tests. Athletes had only one practice trial before three test trials, so a learning effect may still have affected scores. The surgically treated knee group had only 28 athletes, too small for a firm statement about that injury type. Return-to-sport clearance was left to the therapists and was not necessarily based on objective criteria.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that a 90% symmetry score alone is enough to clear an athlete for return to sport. In this study, the non-injured leg was similar to the healthy leg, but the injured leg still performed worse on several tests, and some cleared athletes and healthy athletes did not reach 90% symmetry.