Prevention of groin injuries in sports

Groin injuries occur frequently in football and ice hockey, and previous groin injury is a strong risk factor for future groin injuries, which calls for primary prevention. The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the effect of specific groin-injury prevention programmes in sports. Seven trials were included: six on football players (four male and two female populations) and one on male handball players. In total there were 4191 participants with a total of 157 injuries. The primary analysis, including all participants, did not exhibit a significant decrease in the number of groin injuries after completing a groin injury prevention programme (relative risk (RR) 0.81; 95% CI 0.60 to 1.09). Subgroup analysis based on type of sports, gender and type of prevention programme displayed similar non-significant estimates with RR ranging from 0.48 to 0.81.

Meta-analysis showed a potential clinically meaningful groin injury decrease of 19%, despite there being no statistically significant reduction in sport-related groin injuries could be documented.