Sports Injury Rehabilitation and Clinical Recovery Strategies
A special issue of Journal of Clinical Medicine (ISSN 2077-0383). This special issue belongs to the section "Sports Medicine".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 April 2027 | Viewed by 54
Editor
Interests: sports injury rehabilitation; physiotherapy and exercise therapy; musculoskeletal biomechanics; ACL and knee rehabilitation; neuromuscular control; return-to-sport assessment; athlete recovery and injury prevention
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Sports injury rehabilitation is moving beyond time-based protocols toward criterion-based, individualized pathways that integrate tissue healing, biomechanics, neuromuscular function, athlete-reported outcomes, psychological readiness, sleep, nutrition and workload. Despite major advances in surgery, physiotherapy and sports science, persistent challenges include recurrent injury, incomplete restoration of performance, inconsistent return-to-sport criteria and limited translation of laboratory measures into everyday clinical decisions. These problems are particularly important across different sports, competition levels, sexes, ages and injury types. At the same time, wearable sensors, force platforms, electromyography, advanced imaging, digital monitoring and artificial intelligence offer new opportunities to quantify recovery and personalize rehabilitation, but their clinical validity and implementation require rigorous evaluation.
This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate recent advances in rehabilitation and recovery following acute and overuse sports injuries. We welcome clinically actionable research spanning the continuum from early protection and progressive mechanical loading to return to sport, return to performance and secondary injury prevention. Contributions may address musculoskeletal and sport-related neurological injuries across athlete populations. Original research articles and comprehensive reviews are encouraged.
- Mechanobiology, tissue healing and dose–response relationships for progressive loading
- Criterion-based rehabilitation after ligament, cartilage, meniscal, tendon, muscle and bone injury
- Return-to-sport and return-to-performance decision-making, including reinjury-risk stratification
- Neuromuscular control, motor learning, neurocognitive training and dual-task rehabilitation
- Biomechanical, physiological, imaging and patient-reported outcome assessment
- Wearable sensors, tele-rehabilitation, digital health, virtual reality and artificial intelligence
- Recovery optimization through sleep, nutrition, hydration, fatigue monitoring and load management
- Psychological readiness, fear of reinjury, adherence, shared decision-making and athlete-centered care
- Sex- and gender-specific, age-specific, para-sport and sport-specific rehabilitation considerations
- Prehabilitation, conservative versus surgical pathways, adjunct therapies, implementation and prevention.
Prof. Dr. Magdalena Hagner-Derengowska
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Clinical Medicine is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- sports injury
- rehabilitation
- recovery
- return to sport
- return to performance
- mechanobiology
- load management
- neuromuscular control
- digital health
- injury prevention
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