Groin pain remains a challenging sports injury to manage. The complex regional anatomy provides practitioners with the unenviable task of diagnosing and managing athletes with groin pain. However, a universal terminology and taxonomy would assist practitioners in diagnosing and managing these athletes through the return to play process. In part I, Candice MacMillan discusses the international consensus on groin pain terminology, assessment, and diagnosis.
Athletic groin pain is often triggered or exacerbated by sports that require rapid acceleration and deceleration, change of direction, and forceful hip movements such as kicking(1,2). While symptoms could be mild, groin pain could develop into a career-altering disability if misdiagnosed and treated inappropriately.
Traditionally, clinicians consider the groin the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of sports medicine(2,3). The complexity of the underlying pathology, intricate regional anatomy, and limited consensus among researchers results in controversies among practitioners regarding the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of groin pain. In addition, referred pain from related visceral pathology and other joints such as the hip, sacroiliac joint (SIJ), and lumbar spine further complicates the assessment and treatment plan(2,4). However, in recent years, researchers have attempted to provide uniform guidelines for the clinical examination, diagnostic imaging, and treatment to optimize athletes’ eventual return to play (RTP)(1,2,5,6). The Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes attempts to standardize the groin-related pain terminology and provide definitions for clinical practice.
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