Scoping Review of Injuries in Amateur and Professional Men's Ice Hockey: Letter to the Editor.

Dear Editor:

We read with great interest the recently published “Scoping Review of Injuries in Amateur and Professional Men’s Ice Hockey” by Szukics et al in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine. In their introduction, the authors state that there is still very little information on the epidemiology of ice hockey injuries, and their scoping review was designed to summarize the published data on orthopaedic hockey injuries in male players at both the junior and the professional levels.

Surprisingly, the review by Szukics et al ignored 2 recent research studies conducted on male European ice hockey players in which the epidemiology of injuries over 1 season in the professional Norwegian and Swiss ice hockey leagues was analyzed. Equally surprising, both studies were also published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine in 2020.

We are aware that it may be difficult to perform a broad and comprehensive literature search with 100% certainty. However, the omission of the 2 aforementioned articles is concerning and indicates that the scoping review of Szukics et al does not adequately reflect current scientific knowledge in this important field of sports medicine.

The goal of any scoping review should be to synthesize the available evidence on a particular topic, and—even if conducted for purposes other than a systematic or umbrella review—scoping reviews still “require rigorous and transparent methods in their conduct to ensure that the results are trustworthy.” A methodological framework on how to conduct a scoping study, with challenges and recommendations, has been described in detail. As an example, after defining the research question (first step), the next step is to identify the relevant studies and develop a decision plan for where to search, which terms to use, which sources to search, how long to search, and what language to use. Therefore the search strategy should be explicit, transparent, and as comprehensive as possible. We encourage researchers to carefully consider when to conduct either a scoping or a systematic (or umbrella) review and to follow published guidelines to ensure the rigor and quality of their publications.