The correlation between the imaging characteristics of hamstring injury and time required before returning to sports: a literature review

Abstract

Injuries to the hamstring muscles are common in athletes. Track and field, Australian football, American football and soccer are examples of sports where hamstring injuries are the most common. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a correlation between a hamstring injury prognosis and its characteristics of imaging parameters. The literature search was performed in the databases PubMed and CINAHL, and eleven articles were included. Seven out of the 11 articles showed a correlation between the size of the hamstring injury and length of time required before returning to sports. Different authors have reported contrasting results about length of time required before returning to sports due to location of injury within specific muscle. Majority of the articles found hamstring strain correlated to an extended amount of time required before returning to sports.

Hamstring Injuries: A Current Concepts Review: Evaluation, Nonoperative Treatment, and Surgical Decision Making

“…28 Other limitations of ultrasonography include detecting the size and grade of lesions in muscular or obese patients and the fact that this modality is highly user-dependent. 7,103 In a retrospective study, Koulouris and Connell 59 used ultrasonography and MRI to diagnose acute hamstring injuries and reported that MRI detected proximal hamstring avulsion injuries in 100% of cases. In comparison, ultrasonography detected these injuries in only 58.3% of cases.…”

US Assessment of Sports-related Hip Injuries

“…US features potentially associated with return to activity after hamstring injuries have received less attention compared with MR imaging findings; however, a recent literature review concluded that there was conflicting evidence on the efficacy of either US or MR imaging in predicting the duration of absence from activities (78). In professional Australian football players, greater extent of the injured area assessed at US expressed as a percentage of the cross-sectional area, presence of an intermuscular hematoma, and involvement of the long head of the biceps femoris were associated with a longer recovery time after acute musculotendinous hamstring injuries (79).…”

Magnetic resonance imaging for assessing hamstring injuries: clinical benefits and pitfalls – a review of the current literature

“…The study found that time to RTP increased as MRI-severity grade increased. An additional study in 2016 by Svensson et al evaluated MRI findings in professional soccer players and attempted to correlate these with RTP 16. The study found that radiological grade and size of the injury directly correlated with RTP; however, location and muscle involved did not.…”

“…Svensson et al performed an additional systematic review of the literature regarding MRI characteristics of hamstring imaging and correlation with RTP 16. The authors found that there was an association with size of the hamstring injury on MRI and increased time to RTP.…”