In the competitive swimming scenario, there is a significant incidence of pain, which can be justified by the high levels of training that exposes athletes to constant stress. In this way, the quantification of pain and its monitoring becomes extremely important for clinical practice. A commonly used tool with easy access and clinical applicability, capable of measuring the pain threshold (PT) in a standardized manner is the pressure algometer. However, there is a shortage in the literature of studies that evaluate the reliability of this instrument in healthy swimming athletes. Objectives: Evaluate the intra and inter-examiner reliability and to describe the profile of the PT measurements measured by the algometer in swimming athletes. Methods: It is a reliability study, and will be composed of fifty young athletes members of swimming teams, of both genders, aged between 12 and 20 years. The evaluation will be carried out on the same day and in 2 steps: (1) Test and (2) Retest. In the first step, through a third examiner, the participants will be subjected to marking of points in pre-determined muscles and in points of referred pain. Next, they will perform the PT assessment through the algometer by two other distinct and trained examiners. The interval between each examiner will be five minutes with the participant at rest. After five minutes the test was performed, the step retest will begin, which will have the same procedures as in the previous step. The statistical package SPSS Statistics 23.0 will be used to conduct the analyzes.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
48
The evaluation with the algometer was carried out in the same way by the two examiners, who held the instrument with the dominant hand, in order to adjust and coordinate the movements, while the non-dominant hand was used to stabilize the participant's skin, providing more security, avoiding thus small deviations. The pressure was applied at an angle of 90 ° (between the tool surface and the evaluated point), the rate of pressure increase was approximately 2 kg / cm² / s (kilogram per centimeter squared per second), up to the level that the participant reported a change in the sensation of pressure to a sensation of discomfort and immediately the examiner removed the device from the positioned location.
University of Sao Paulo State
Presidente Prudente, São Paulo, Brazil
Pain threshold
Portable hand pressure algometer (FPX 50/220, Wagner Instruments, Greenwich, USA), measured in kg / cm² (kilogram per centimeter squared).
Time frame: two hours
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