Hamstring Strain Injuries (HSIs) are the most common type of lesion in professional footballers and the leading cause of absence days from sports. However, recent studies have shown that high-level football teams apparently do not apply any HSI prevention protocol. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of preventive strategies and protocols in reducing the incidence of hamstring muscle injuries in professional and semi-professional football teams. A literature search of PubMed/MEDLINE, ISI/Web of Science and Scopus databases was conducted with the keywords “hamstring* and (injury* or strain) and prevent* and (soccer or football)”. Quality and bias assessment was completed through the Kennelly modified scale. The Injury Incidence Rate (IIR) and the Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR) were assessed in the statistical analysis. In the meta-analysis, data were extracted, pooled and analysed with “Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Version 3.3.070” software. In total, 8 of the 1017 original search studies met the inclusion criteria of this review. The total exposure of the studies was 170,221.8 h, while the number of HSIs recorded was 165 in the intervention groups and 224 in the control groups. The average score of the quality assessment was 23.6/34. The meta-analysis of six of the eight included studies provided strong evidence that interventions are effective in reducing hamstring injuries. The IRR of the effect size was 0.443, with p-value = 0.001. The studies analysed applied different preventive strategies: the Nordic hamstring exercise, the FIFA 11+ programme and exercises for core stability or balance training. All these interventions proved to have a successful effect on prevention of hamstring injuries.

Metastases are complications of primary tumors due to prolonged cancer survival and have become an important issue for oncological patients and the most frequent cause of death and disability. Bone metastases occur at a later stage of cancer disease, and the spine is the most frequent site. To date, the aim of the treatment of metastases remains to be the control of disease and provide a satisfactory quality of life. The decision making of treatment is influenced by several factors such as the status of the primary disease, the number of metastases, site involvement, and the performance status of the patients. For this reason, the treatment of metastases is challenging and undergoes constant development. Therefore, alternative techniques with respect to surgery, which is the first option but not always practicable, and radiochemotherapy are attractive. Lately, electrochemotherapy has emerged as an innovative method for treating various primary and metastatic solid tumors, showing promising outcomes in terms of inducing tumor tissue necrosis and alleviating symptoms. This technique uses electric pulses to increase the uptake of chemotherapy by tumor cells. Despite the initial enthusiasm and good results in the treatment of bone tumors, relatively few papers have described its use in spine metastases. Therefore, we conducted a systemic review of this intriguing topic while also reporting our experience in the use of electrochemotherapy for the treatment of spine metastases.

In athletes, one of the most common injuries is a sprained ankle. If the energy of the trauma is particularly high, this type of injury can lead to an isolated medial dislocation of the subtalar joint (STJ), a rare condition poorly described in the literature. The aim of this study was to verify if a reliable conservative treatment and a specific physiotherapy rehabilitation protocol in isolated medial dislocation of the STJ in athletes is described in the literature. A systematic review of the published literature of the last 11 years was performed by applying the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines using three databases: Pubmed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The keywords used were “(subtalar OR talocalcaneal) AND dislocation”. We considered only studies that included professional or amateur athletes (athletic patients). We used the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) scale, range of motion (ROM) of the subtalar and ankle joint, subtalar and talonavicular joint osteoarthritis, and patient feedback to evaluate their outcomes. A total of 12 studies were included in our review, with a total of 26 athletic patients. Sixteen of them had good results with the correlation between the duration of immobilisation and the outcomes. Nevertheless, due to the small number of patients included in the analysed studies on this subject in the literature, there is not yet a univocal clinical protocol to treat the isolated medial subtalar joint dislocation (STJD) warranting further research in the field.