Reliability of Algometry in Swimming Athletes

Pain threshold

In the competitive swimming scenario, there is a significant incidence of pain, which can be
 justified by the high levels of training that exposes athletes to constant stress. In this
 way, the quantification of pain and its monitoring becomes extremely important for clinical
 practice. A commonly used tool with easy access and clinical applicability, capable of
 measuring the pain threshold (PT) in a standardized manner is the pressure algometer.
 However, there is a shortage in the literature of studies that evaluate the reliability of
 this instrument in healthy swimming athletes. Objectives: Evaluate the intra and
 inter-examiner reliability and to describe the profile of the PT measurements measured by the
 algometer in swimming athletes. Methods: It is a reliability study, and will be composed of
 fifty young athletes members of swimming teams, of both genders, aged between 12 and 20
 years. The evaluation will be carried out on the same day and in 2 steps: (1) Test and (2)
 Retest. In the first step, through a third examiner, the participants will be subjected to
 marking of points in pre-determined muscles and in points of referred pain. Next, they will
 perform the PT assessment through the algometer by two other distinct and trained examiners.
 The interval between each examiner will be five minutes with the participant at rest. After
 five minutes the test was performed, the step retest will begin, which will have the same
 procedures as in the previous step. The statistical package SPSS Statistics 23.0 will be used
 to conduct the analyzes.