What is Musculoskeletal (MSK) Screening?
A musculoskeletal screening involves gathering information about an individual’s MSK condition and conducting a series of sport specific assessments to identify risk factors that could predispose an athlete to injury..
Why is it Important?
The primary benefit of a musculoskeletal screening is the prevention of injury.
- Will identify individual athletes strength and weakness
- Helps in planning accurate and specific rehabilitation and conditioning program
- Reduces episodes of training sessions missed due to injury.
How do we screen?
In General:
-Observation of static posture
- Non functional Assessment of joint movements
- Muscle Strength and Flexibility
- Normal gait pattern
Sports specific:
(Why Sports specific: Athletes rarely use single joint movements, instead body works as one unit)
-Dynamic Postural Assessment (Eg: Over head squats, Single leg squats, Push, Pull & Press Tests)
- Stability Tests
- Jump Tests
NB: All tests based on the demand of sport, age, gender and individual
When to Screen?
- To predict the injury risk factor at the earliest; Preseason MSK Screening plays a vital role
- Follow up; twice in a season is most recommended
Limitations in Indian Scenario
- Time consuming
- Full fledged scientific team is required
- Funding is limited in most of the clubs/academies
- No standardized Indian protocol and datas are available to compare the results.
- Still depending on foreign datas.
- Lack of Systemic support
Eg: Latest Technology, Softwares, Statisticians etc..
Future Scope
- A standardized protocol need to be set by individual associations and should impose to perform on all registered academies or clubs under it
- Data should be stored
- After 5-10 years of follow up ; we can come up with a standardised normative data of Indian athletes
