Prevention of ACL injuries in professional soccer athletes: a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: Soccer is a sport whose ever-present characteristics are high-intensity movements, with accelerations, decelerations, changes in direction, jumps, turns, kicks, sprints, and sudden stops. This sport has many fans, both professionals and amateurs; with this factor of high incidence of practitioners, this sport ends up having a high rate of injuries due to irregular lawns and physical contact between players. Objective: To investigate the differences of preventive programs with regard to their components, the frequency, and duration of training, when training is carried out in relation to the sports season, and its ability to prevent ACL tears in soccer players. Literature Review: The sports physiotherapist has the duty to provide the ARTIGO DE REVISÃO https://doi.org/10.51995/2237-3373.v13i3e110066 2 Santos, Aguiar, & Costa 2023, Vol. 13, n. 3, e110066 professional or amateur athlete with the proper comfort and safety in relation to sports practice, leading to the improvement of the quality of life and the full recovery of the athlete. The physiotherapist is essential from before the injury, thus being able to monitor and evaluate the athlete, thus identifying possible injuries and developing a specific preventive work so that this athlete does not suffer from future injuries. Methods: The systematic review was followed using the PRISMA guidelines, and the search was performed in the PubMED database in English. Mesh and DeCS recommended the search terms, and the descriptors “Anterior Cruciate Ligament”, “Soccer”, “Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries”, ´´Tertiary Prevention`` were used and to combine the search descriptors the “AND” was used. The inclusion criteria in the research were: soccer players who had an ACL injury; articles that addressed evident data on the injury mechanism in the ACL; English language; respecting the time between 2013 and 2023. Exclusion criteria were books, book chapters, abstracts and articles that did not present research on ACL injuries and samples that did not report being from soccer players. Results: n=197 articles were found in the PubMED database. After applying the exclusion criteria, we obtained n= 9 results. The 9 articles that make up this study are in English. Conclusion: The results first showed that prevention programs can be an ally during soccer practice, as the study obtained effective results in reducing ACL injuries.