ArticleBMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation2023
The effectiveness of non-surgical interventions in athletes with groin pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Article in BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advancing Sports Injury Treatment Through Cell-Free MSC-Based Therapies: A Narrative Review.Muscles (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Rumination catastrophism and pain in injured athletes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Improving Methodological Quality in Meta-Analyses of Athlete Pain Interventions: An Overview of Systematic Reviews.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- How You Treat Groin Pain in the Adult Patient with Acupuncture and/or Chinese Herbs.Medical acupuncture · 2024Article
- What is the Injury Incidence and Profile in Professional Male Ice Hockey? A Systematic Review.International journal of sports physical therapy · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGroin pain is a common pathology among athletes, presenting pain and a reduced range of motion (ROM) as clinical characteristics. Passive physical therapy (PPT) and exercise therapy (ET) interventions are chosen firstly before surgery. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was: (i) to qualitative review the effects of each non-surgical intervention; (ii) to quantitative compare the effects of PPTs plus ET intervention to ET in isolation in pain intensity, and hip ROM in athletes with groin pain.
methodsA systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted. Pubmed, PEDro, Web of science, Scopus and Cochrane library were searched. Randomized controlled trials comparing PPT plus ET to ET interventions were included. The methodological quality and risk of bias of the included studies, were assessed with the PEDro scale and the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. To assess the certainty of evidence the GRADEpro GDT was used. Meta-analyses were conducted using RevMan 5.4 using mean difference analysis to assess the variables pain intensity and hip ROM.
resultsA total of 175 studies was identified from the consulted databases. Five studies were included for systematic- review, from which three studies were meta-analyzed. The methodological quality of the included studies ranged from poor to high. ET compared to PPT plus ET provided statistically significant improvements in pain intensity in the short-term (MD = 2.45; 95% CI 1.11, 3.79; I
conclusionsThe qualitative review showed that PPTs plus ET and ET seem to have positive effects on pain intensity and hip ROM. The quantitative analysis found very low certainty of evidence proposing a positive effect in pain intensity for ET interventions based on hip muscles stretching, compared to PPT combined with ET, in the short-term.
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Registered trials
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