Physiotherapy Interventions for Sports Injuries: Current Trends and Emerging Techniques

Abstract

As sports injuries lead to pain, limited function, and delaying sports activity recovery, there is a necessity to provide a proper rehabilitation procedure. This paper contains information concerning the latest trends and new physiotherapy rehabilitation techniques for sports injuries, and describes the factors affecting the effectiveness of the rehabilitation process. A cross-sectional analytical study was carried out, which included 150 registered physiotherapists, and the results of data analysis were obtained through the use of such IBM SPSS Statistics tools as descriptive statistics, Chi-Square test, Independent Samples t-test, One-Way ANOVA, and Multiple Linear Regression. It was revealed that exercise therapy and manual therapy still remain the most common techniques, but the number of physiotherapists who use BFR training, Dry Needling, Shockwave Therapy, and Virtual Reality assisted rehabilitation has increased. Pain relief turned out to be the main indicator of effectiveness of the rehabilitation process (Mean = 4.28 ± 0.59), while the effectiveness of the rehabilitation process of those physiotherapists who used the new techniques on a regular basis proved to be much higher (p<0.001). Using multiple regression analysis, the influence of different factors on the effectiveness of the rehabilitation process was determined.