Sport injuries in football for individuals with visual impairment. Exploratory systematic review

Abstract

The present study aims to exploratory systematic review related to injuries in football 5-a-side for people with visual impairment. For the document search, the following keywords were used: “Football 5-a-side” and “Injury”. The databases used were Web of Science, Pubmed and Scopus. To limit the search for manuscripts, a series of inclusion and exclusion criteria were established to select suitable documents. After the document search and analysis procedure until January 2021, nine manuscripts, seven investigations, and two bibliographic reviews were selected, related in a general or specific way, to football injuries for blind people. In conclusion, there is evidence that injuries mainly occur in the lower extremities due to the playground characteristics (reduced space with side fences), by contact with other players, and, above all, by playing in the absence of vision. The most affected body segments by injuries are the foot, hip, knees, and quadriceps. Based on these results, it is recommended to carry out preventive training before, during, and after competitions, to avoid possible sports injuries.