Shoulder injuries in soccer players.

Even though soccer is the most popular sport of the world, no review is available at present to resume the available data on shoulder injuries in soccer. The aim of this review is to report the available epidemiological data on shoulder specific injuries in soccer players and to describe the common mechanisms of shoulder injuries in soccer. Studies published through September 15, 2011, were identified by using MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and Pre-CINAHL, Pub-Med, Web of Science, and the full Cochrane Library. Reference lists of included studies were searched by hand. Studies were included if they reported on shoulder injuries in soccer players. Limits were not placed on year of publication, status of publication, or language. The journal, authors, and author affiliations of included studies were masked from 2 reviewers. We planned to perform a study on the epidemiology, mechanisms and management of shoulder injuries in elite soccer players. We also planned to use Review Manager (RevMan. Version 5 for Windows) to calculate the magnitude of treatment effect. No studies on clinical outcome of shoulder injuries in elite soccer athletes were found. No studies on the mechanism of shoulder injury in elite soccer players were found. The results of the available studies on epidemiology are reported. Despite soccer is the world's game, few studies focused on shoulder injuries in soccer players, and therefore no definitive conclusions can be drawn. Further research is warranted to clarify the epidemiology, mechanisms and management of shoulder injuries in elite soccer players.