How comprehensive is the description of participants in randomized controlled trials involving individuals with patellar tendinopathy? A systematic review
Tendon, tendinitis, knee, rehabilitation.
The prevalence of patellar tendinopathy can be quite high in athletes of different sports modalities. The consequences of this dysfunction can be devastating for an athlete's career. Several randomized controlled trials have been developed in an attempt to identify the best treatment approaches for individuals with patellar tendinopathy. However, the description of study participants is not always clear and comprehensive. This makes it difficult for clinicians to understand how relevant the results of the research in question are to their patients. Recently, an International Tendinopathy Consensus established recommendations on the characteristics of participants that should be reported in clinical trials involving tendinopathies in general, including population demographics, clinical tendinopathy descriptors, general health and comorbidities, and participant recruitment and screening. To our knowledge, however, no study has verified whether the presentation of data from participants included in clinical trials involving patellar tendinopathy is in accordance with the criteria recommended by expert consensus. The purpose of this review is to verify how comprehensive the description of participants in randomized controlled trials involving individuals with patellar tendinopathy is. A literature review was carried out in databases by two independent reviewers, seeking to identify randomized controlled trials involving individuals with patellar tendinopathy. To assess the quality of studies regarding the description of the participants, a scale was developed based on the score of the International Tendinopathy Consensus (eCONT). Pearson's correlation test was used to verify the existence of a relationship between year of publication of the trials and the quality of data presentation. Thirty-four clinical trials were included in the review. The studies involved a total of 1,262 individuals (996 men and 266 women), with an average age of 28.25 ± 4.10 years. The average score of studies in the eCONT was 9.88 ± 2.07 points, ranging from 6 to 13 points out of a total of 16 possible on the score. The inclusion criteria of the different studies were substantially heterogeneous. Most often incomplete information included medication use and the presence of comorbidities. There was no correlation between year of publication and score on the quality of data presentation scale (P=0.372). In conclusion, clinical trials involving individuals with patellar tendinopathy present heterogeneous and, in many cases, incomplete information about the included participants. The possibility that individuals with different conditions that cause anterior knee pain may have been recruited for these studies under the diagnosis of patellar tendinopathy is also of note. This could lead to confusion among the scientific community and clinicians as to which treatments are in fact effective for the rehabilitation of individuals with patellar tendinopathy.