Preface

Chapter 8 **Surgical Treatment 221**

**in Soccer 241**

M. Giacchino and G. Stesina

**Month of Ramadan 305**

**Section 4 Prevention 239**

**VI** Contents

Giuliano Cerulli, Enrico Sebastiani, Giacomo Placella, Matteo Maria

Tei, Andrea Speziali and Pierluigi Antinolfi

Chapter 9 **How and When to Use an Injury Prevention Intervention**

Alexandre Dellal, Karim Chamari and Adam Owen

Chapter 10 **Prevention of Muscle Injuries — The Soccer Model 275**

Chapter 11 **Muscle Injuries in Professional Soccer Players During the**

Karim Chamari, Alexandre Dellal and Monoem Haddad

Muscle injuries are one of the most common problems in sports medicine. In particular, muscle tears are one of more frequent causes of sport activity suspension. For example, in football, the most popular sport in the world, almost one on four injuries are hamstrings strain; therefore, a team composed by 25 players should expect on average 10 hamstring in‐ juries per season (Ekstrand et al., 2001). Taking into consideration all locations, muscle inju‐ ries represent nearly 1/3 of all the "time-loss injury" observed in male professional football and 92% of those affect the 4 major muscle groups of the lower limb (the quadriceps, the hamstring, the adductors and the calves). Again, a team consisting of 25 players should ex‐ pect on average 15 indirect muscle injuries per season with an average severity of 2 weeks for each injury (Eirale and Ekstrand, 2013). Despite the huge impact of muscle injuries into the majority of sports activities, evidence in the literature on their treatment and prevention is still lacking. Commonly, rehabilitation protocols of muscle injury are based on empirical data or on personal experience of the physician and/or therapist or, at best, based on ex‐ perts' opinion. For this reason, the management of these therapeutic interventions should be at least based on a precise knowledge of the biological and physiological basis of muscle injury. We believe, in fact, that only a perfect knowledge of the mechanisms of muscle repair can overcome, although not completely, to the lack of validated protocols. This conviction has led us to bring together an international pool of Sports Medicine experts able to provide the latest updates on some aspects of muscle injuries in sports. In particular, we focused our attention on the of muscle tears biology, treatment and prevention. We hope that this text‐ book may be a useful didactic tool for physicians, physical therapists, athletic trainers and all those engaged in this specific Sports Medicine field.

#### **Gian Nicola Bisciotti**

Senior Coordinator Kinemove Rehabilitation Centers, Pontremoli , Parma, La Spezia, Italy

Lead Physiologist c/o Qatar Orthopedic and Sport Medicine Hospital, FIFA Center of Excellence, Doha, Qatar

> **Cristiano Eirale** Aspetar Hospital, Doha, Qatar

**Section 1**

**General Aspect**

**Section 1**

**General Aspect**

**Chapter 1**

**Etiology, Biology and Treatment of Muscular Lesions**

The detrimental event on a muscular level, founds one of the most recurring traumatic insults in sporting environment. The entity of the lesion can go from simple sprain, often associated with the breakage of small vessels, with appearance of pain and swelling, to complete muscular tear. The consequences for the athlete, which appear linked with the entity of the lesion, are always unpleasant and involve suspension, more or less long, of sporting activity, not to

In this chapter we will try to clear up the different physiological aspects which normally characterize the traumatic event and to describe, even if only summarize, the mechanism of

Few authors have explicitly defined the term "muscular lesion", even though some have attempted to link the concept of lesion to that of the loss of proper muscular function (Brooks et al., 1995). However, identifying muscular lesion with the simple loss of function isn't altogether correct, indeed muscular function may be nullified by events, such as tiredness or atrophy, which have nothing to do with the detrimental mechanism. For these reasons, even though the concept of functionality loss represents one of the main characteristics of the lesion of the muscle, we believe that the correct definition of muscular lesion cannot overlook the concept of "damage" towards the muscular structure. Therefore, a correct definition in this sense could be the following: " muscular lesion is identifiable by the loss of functionality of the muscle caused by damage, more or less severe, on a level of muscular structure or on a level of anatomical sites assigned to transmit strength", intending with the last explanation

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Bisciotti and Eirale; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

Gian Nicola Bisciotti and Cristiano Eirale

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/56602

**1. Introduction**

mention suitable therapy.

**2. The definition of muscular lesion**

muscular repair.

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
