CONTEXT: Musculoskeletal injury-prediction methods vary and may have limitations that affect the accuracy of results and clinical meaningfulness.
BACKGROUND: Research examining injury risk factors is meaningful, but attempting to extrapolate injury risk from studies that do not prospectively assess injury occurrence may limit clinical applications. Injury incidence is a vital outcome measure, which allows for the appropriate interpretation of injury-prediction analyses; a lack of injury-incidence data may decrease the accuracy and increase the uncertainty of injury-risk estimates. Extrapolating results that predict an injury risk factor to predicting actual injuries may lead to inappropriate clinical decision-making models.
CONCLUSIONS: Improved understanding of the limitations of injury-prediction methods, specifically those that do not prospectively assess injuries, will allow clinicians to better assess the clinical meaningfulness of the results.