Abstract

The use of clinical tests to describe risk factors that affect sport injuries is one of the objectives of medicine at world level, whose projections are to be able to intervene on training and preventive physical therapy programs. The Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) has been used as an indicator of the risk of lower extremity injury on sportsmen. The present transversal, non experimental and descriptive study has as purpose to describe the condition of the dynamic balance, using the SEBT, of high performance sportsmen (N=77), members of the National Selections of Athletics (n=17), Basketball (n=16) and Volleyball (n=44) between 15 and 35 years old, that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The study was performed on the dependencies of the “Centro de Alto Rendimiento”, and the protocol included signature of an informed written consent, demonstration, warming-up, practice of the test and three definitive scopes performed on each of the eight excursions. By statistical analysis, mean scores and standard deviations were identified for the eight directions, described by discipline, total population and gender. The Posteromedial reach presented the major excursion (right 115 + 12.7, left 115 +11.8), which is consistent with the tendency of other authors. It was identified that 55.84% of the subjects would be at risk of suffering a lower extremity injury if the criterion established by the studies of Olmsted and Plisky is utilized (right-left difference in anterior excursion > 4 cm). Finally, the SEBT satisfies the needs of sports medicine, and can be applied in preventive evaluations and treatments, which makes it extremely useful in populations with high prevalence of lower extremity injuries.