Return to Play After a Muscle Lesion

Abstract

The return to sports after muscle injury is a very delicate and problematic moment of the entire rehabilitation program. In fact, in general, this decision relies on a few objective data that can facilitate and properly address the choice. On the other hand, the policy to be maintained as part of the sports medicine is to try to recover the athlete in the least time as possible while minimizing, in the same time, the risk of recurrence. However, if in a sedentary person, or at least for a person who has low functional demands, the end of the rehabilitative after muscle injury may coincide with the anatomical healing of the lesion site. For an athlete, this may not be the case.

Athletes, especially professional athletes, have extremely high functional requirements, and the rehabilitative process may not be considered concluded until there is optimal recovery of muscular function. For all of these reasons it is clear that the decision of an athlete’s return to the field after muscle injury should try to rest, as much as possible, on objective data that will help the medical staff in this difficult choice.

In this work we will present, although schematically, the guidelines on which to make the decision of return to the field and, at the same time, their scientific rationale of use.