The purpose of this study was to determine the most accurate isokinetic testing method, either concentric/concentric or concentric/eccentric, for the detection of previous hamstring injury. Twenty-one male semi-professional soccer players were recruited from premier divisions of the Sunday football league and the Isthmian league division one in England and examined on a Cybex Norm isokinetic dynamometer. Eleven players had suffered previous hamstring injury whilst ten players that had never suffered hamstring injury formed the control group. For each group the following ratios were determined: unilaterally: concentric hamstring/concentric quadriceps, eccentric hamstring/concentric quadriceps; bilaterally: concentric hamstring, eccentric hamstring and concentric quadriceps at both 60 • /s and 120 • /s. The Area Under the Curve (AUC) of Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) provided a summary measure of the validity of each test. Significant differences between injury and non-injury groups were found for the bilateral concentric hamstring ratio measured with a concentric/concentric testing method at 60 • /s (AUC = 0.773, P < 0.05). All other ratios rendered non-significant AUC values. In addition, non-significant AUC were recorded for all ratios measured at 120 • /s. Therefore, these observations suggested that the concentric/concentric testing method may be suitable for detecting previous hamstring injury. In addition, these findings suggested that a lower speed (60 • /s) should be utilized for the muscular strength analysis of soccer players suffering from hamstring injury.

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Background: The use of patient-reported questionnaires to collect information on costs associated with routine healthcare services, such as chiropractic, represents a less labour intensive alternative to retrieving these data from patient files. The aim of this paper was to compare patient-report versus patient files for the collection of data describing healthcare usage in chiropractic clinics. Methods: As part of a prospective single cohort multi-centre study, data on the number of visits made to chiropractic clinics determined using patient-reported questionnaires or as recorded in patient files were compared three months following the start of treatment. These data were analysed for agreement using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and the 95% Limits of Agreement. Results: Eighty-nine patients that had undergone chiropractic care were included in the present study. The two methods yielded an ICC of 0.83 (95% CI = 0.75 to 0.88). However, there was a significant difference between the data collection methods, with an average of 0.6 (95% CI = 0.25 to 1.01) additional visits reported in patient files. The 95% Limits of Agreement ranged from 3 fewer visits to 4 additional visits in patient files relative to the number of visits recalled by patients. Conclusion: There was some discrepancy between the number of visits made to the clinic recalled by patients compared to the number recorded in patient files. This should be taken into account in future evaluations of costs of treatments.