Evidence of conservative therapy for acute hamstring injury ―meta-analysis ―

Abstract

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate the evidence for the conservative treatment of patients with acute hamstring injury. MeSH and key words representing acute hamstring injury and conservative treatment were used to conduct an electronic search in PubMed, Central, and ICHUSHI. Randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, and prospective comparative trials investigating the effects of conservative treat ment in patients with acute hamstring injury were included. The main outcomes were the numbers of days to re turn to sports and to re-injury. The quality of included studies was assessed using 12 items related to the risk of bias. Out of 583 studies, six trials met the inclusion criteria for this review. Of these, four studies (208 patients) were included in the meta-analysis to examine the effects of eccentric hamstring exercises and other exercises on the main outcomes. Meta-analysis results suggested that there are no statistical differences between the two treatments on the effect on days to return to sports and re-injury. High heterogeneity was observed. The overall quality of evidence was very low. In conclusion, the number of studies regarding the current topic is limited. It is therefore difficult to determine the true effect of conservative treatment in patients with acute hamstring injury.