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IntroductionPrimary cam morphology is highly prevalent in many athlete populations, causing debilitating hip osteoarthritis in some. Existing research is mired in confusion partly because stakeholders have not agreed on key primary cam morphology elements or a prioritised research agenda. We aimed to inform a more rigorous, inclusive and evidence-based approach to research on primary cam morphology and its natural history by working towards agreement on a set of research priorities for conditions affecting the young person’s hip.MethodsAn international expert panel—the Young Athlete’s Hip Research (YAHiR) Collaborative—rated research priority statements through an online two-round Delphi exercise and met online to explore areas of tension and dissent. Panellists ranked the prioritised research statements according to the Essential National Health Research (ENHR) ranking strategy. Reporting of results followed REPRISE (REporting guideline for PRIority SEtting of health).ResultsA diverse Delphi panel (n=65, Delphi rounds 1 and 2; three ENHR strategy surveys: n=49; n=44; n=42) from 18 countries representing six stakeholder groups, prioritised and ranked 18 of 38 research priority statements. The prioritised statements outlined seven research domains: (1) best practice physiotherapy, (2) rehabilitation progression and return to sport, (3) exercise intervention and load management, (4) primary cam morphology prognosis and aetiology, (5) femoroacetabular impingement syndrome prognosis and aetiology, (6) diagnostic criteria, and (7) screening. The panel recommended areas of tension and dissent for the research community to focus on immediately.ConclusionWhile informing more rigorous, inclusive and evidence-based research, this consensus is a roadmap for researchers, policy-makers and funders to implement research dedicated to reducing the cost and burden of hip disease related to primary cam morphology.

Consensus is an often neglected but important part of the scientific process. Consensus agreement allows researchers to agree on fundamentals such as terminology and taxonomy, to establish core outcome sets for reporting on medical conditions, and to set research priorities. Consensus methods are invoked by the scientific community to provide answers on topics with little to no previous research, or to provide further guidance when the available evidence is unclear. In the medical literature the most common methods for assessing consensus are the Delphi, RAND-UCLA and Nominal Group Technique. However, consensus methods and their subsequent published 'consensus statements' often: exclude relevant stakeholders or fail to justify their expert panel selection; neglect to use systematic/scoping reviews to inform what questions or recommendations their consensus panel will rank or vote upon; and often omit the levels of agreement amongst panel members, or worse suppress the existance of important minority views. Given their importance in providing direction to the scientific community, methods of consensus development and their subsequent reporting require further scrutiny. We propose to use the methods of consensus development within the patellofemoral pain field to review: how consensus has been generated; who has been invited/involved; whether formal literature reviews have supported statements and recommendations; and how subsequent agreements/dissent has been reported. By studying the subset of statements on patellofemoral pain we hope to inform future recommendations on the production of rigorous consensus development and reporting.

IntroductionPrognosis following surgical rotator cuff repair (RCR) is often established through the assessment of non-modifiable biomedical factors such as tear size. This understates the complex nature of recovery following RCR. There is a need to identify modifiable psychosocial and sleep-related variables, and to find out whether changes in central pain processing influence prognosis after RCR. This will improve our knowledge on how to optimise recovery, using a holistic rehabilitation approach.Methods and analysisThis longitudinal study will analyse 141 participants undergoing usual care for first time RCR. Data will be collected 1–21 days preoperatively (T1), then 11–14 weeks (T2) and 12–14 months (T3) postoperatively. We will use mixed-effects linear regression to assess relationships between potential prognostic factors and our primary and secondary outcome measures—the Western Ontario Rotator Cuff Index; the Constant-Murley Score; the Subjective Shoulder Value; Maximal Pain (Numeric Rating Scale); and Quality of Life (European Quality of Life, 5 dimensions, 5 levels). Potential prognostic factors include: four psychosocial variables; pain catastrophising, perceived stress, injury perceptions and patients’ expectations for RCR; sleep; and four factors related to central pain processing (central sensitisation inventory, temporal summation, cold hyperalgesia and pressure pain threshold). Intercorrelations will be assessed to determine the strength of relationships between all potential prognostic indicators.Our aim is to explore whether modifiable psychosocial factors, sleep-related variables and altered central pain processing are associated with outcomes pre-RCR and post-RCR and to identify them as potential prognostic factors.Ethics and disseminationThe results of the study will be disseminated at conferences such as the European Pain Congress. One or more manuscripts will be published in a peer-reviewed SCI-ranked journal. Findings will be reported in accordance with the STROBE statement and PROGRESS framework. Ethical approval is granted by the Ethical commission of Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, No: ID_2018-02089Trial registration numberNCT04946149.

There is an absence of high-quality evidence to support rehabilitation and return-to-sport decisions following shoulder injuries in athletes. The Athlete Shoulder Consensus Group was convened to lead a consensus process that aimed to produce best-practice guidance for clinicians, athletes, and coaches for managing shoulder injuries in sport. We developed the consensus via a 2-round Delphi process (involving more than 40 content and methods experts) and an in-person meeting. This consensus statement provides guidance with respect to load and risk management. supporting athlete shoulder rehabilitation, and decision making during the return-to-sport process. This statement is designed to offer clinicians the flexibility to apply principle-based approaches to managing the return-to-sport process within a variety of sporting backgrounds. The principles and consensus of experts working across multiple sports may provide a template for developing additional sport-specific guidance in the future.

The International Olympic Committee has published 27 ‘consensus statements’ since 2004.1 Many of them are heavily downloaded and highly cited. Several have influenced health policy and societal behaviour. Some consensus statements are so well-known they go by just one name in context: ‘Berlin’ means concussion, ‘Doha’ is synonymous with groin pain, and ‘Bern’ evokes return to play guidelines. Despite their eminence, even the most respected consensus statements have limitations: relevant stakeholders are absent from the consensus process; authors inadequately report the method of evidence synthesis; consensus group members may be ‘coerced’ to agree; and the reports often fail to capture the rich discussion that occurs during a panel meeting. We critically examine methods that underpin sport and exercise medicine consensus statements. Specifically, we: (1) question whether consensus statements deserve their prestige; (2) highlight bias in the current methods of developing consensus and (3) propose future steps to improve the quality of consensus statements by using reporting guidelines. Expert opinion sits at the base of the evidence pyramid but when those experts gather, and take recent systematic reviews into account, their output—consensus statements—are given great weight. Consensus statements are some of the most downloaded and cited publications. …

Running shoe prescription is based upon outdated paradigms, foremost the idea that correcting or preventing overpronation is desirable when attempting to prevent injury. Poor shoe prescription has the potential to affect an individual’s performance and may lead to injury and withdrawal from a potentially lifelong healthful pursuit. In this systematic narrative review, we consider the evidence (validity and reliability) for implementing two types of wearable device: instrumented ‘pressure sensing’ insoles and inertial measurement units (IMUs) to assess biomechanical data. The review summarizes existing data on the selection and placement, ability to capture kinetic and kinematic data effectively, and the limitations of both IMUs and pressure sensitive insoles for in-field measurement. We found that wearable devices have demonstrated an excellent level of reliability with some also showing good to excellent levels of validity to measure markers of potential interest in a future shoe prescription context. Further work is required to confirm which kinematic and/or kinetic measurements offer the greatest insight to individuals selecting their favoured shoe. Finally, we propose an objective alternative to the current shoe prescription rhetoric, based upon objective data collection using a wearable device.

More than one million scientists publish peer-reviewed research each year.1 Health research strives to generate new discoveries or consolidate existing knowledge to benefit the lives of humans. But does published health research impact patients, policy, the economy, or society? Common metrics that are purported to capture scientists’ contributions to their field include citations generated by peer-reviewed publications, journal impact factor, and indices that combine stand-alone metrics such as publication and citation count (eg, H-index).2 These metrics are frequently used by academic scientists and administrators to (1) inform faculty hiring and promotion, (2) rank grant funding applications, and (3) compare researchers’ perceived productivity.3 However, measures of academic output do not appear to capture the socioeconomic impact of health research, and fixating on academic metrics can lead scientists to neglect other important areas. As federal and international health research funding agencies increasingly demand that research should have impact beyond academia, researchers and academic institutions must adapt. We aim to draw the sport and exercise medicine community’s attention to the concept of research impact, highlight existing ways of assessing research impact, and outline the challenges of measuring research impact. Research impact is considered the positive effect, influence, or benefit that …

The JOSPT editorial team details digital developments since the beginning of 2020: JOSPT's website redesign, the launches of the JOSPT Insights podcast and JOSPT blog, and the JOSPT Asks video series.