Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Feb 28:10:100245.
doi: 10.1016/j.prdoa.2024.100245. eCollection 2024.

Treatment of task-specific dystonia in sports: A systematic review

B Nijenhuis  1   2   3 , E van Wensen  4 , M Smit  1   2 , T van Zutphen  3 , J Zwerver  5   6 , M A J Tijssen  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Treatment of task-specific dystonia in sports: A systematic review

B Nijenhuis et al. Clin Park Relat Disord. .

Abstract

Introduction: Task specific dystonia is a movement disorder only affecting a highly practiced skill and is found in a broad set of expert movements including in sports. Despite affecting many sports, there is no comprehensive review of treatment options, which is in contrast to better studied forms of task specific dystonia in musicians and writers. For this reason, studies involving an intervention to treat task specific dystonia in sports were systematically reviewed, with special attention for the quality of outcome measures.

Methods: The PICO systematic search strategy was employed on task-specific dystonia, and all synonyms. Inclusion criteria were peer reviewed published studies pertaining to sports, studies with a measurement and/or intervention in TSD, all in English. We excluded abstracts, expert opinions, narrative review articles, unpublished studies, dissertations and studies exclusively relating to choking. We included case reports, case studies and case-control studies.

Results: In April 2022 Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, and Psychinfo were searched. Of the 7000 articles identified, 31 were included that described psychological and invasive and/or pharmacological interventions. There was a lack of formal standardized outcome measures in studies resulting in low quality evidence for the effectiveness of treatment options. A descriptive synthesis showed emotional regulation was effective, but was exclusively tried in golfers. Interventions like botulinum toxin or pharmacology had a similar effectiveness compared to studies in musicians dystonia, however there was almost no formal evidence for these treatments.

Conclusion: The quality of studies was low with a lack of standardized outcome measures. Future studies with larger cohorts and quantitative outcome measures are needed to improve understanding of treatments for task specific dystonia in athletes.

Keywords: Intervention; Sports; Task Specific Dystonia; Treatment.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Search protocol for filtering studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Albanese A., Bhatia K., Bressman S.B., DeLong M.R., Fahn S., Fung V.S.C., Hallett M., Jankovic J., Jinnah H.A., Klein C., Lang A.E., Mink J.W., Teller J.K. Phenomenology and classification of dystonia: A consensus update. Mov. Disord. 2013;28:863–873. doi: 10.1002/mds.25475. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sadnicka A., Rosset-Llobet J. A motor control model of task-specific dystonia and its rehabilitation. Prog. Brain Res. 2019;249:269–283. doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2019.04.011. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Stinear C.M., Byblow W.D. Impaired modulation of intracortical inhibition in focal hand dystonia. Cereb. Cortex. 2004;14:555–561. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhh017. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Stahl C.M., Frucht S.J. Focal task specific dystonia: a review and update. J. Neurol. 2017;264:1536–1541. doi: 10.1007/s00415-016-8373-z. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Horisawa S., Takeda N., Taira T. Watchmaker’s dystonia. Mov Disord Clin Pract. 2016;3:102–103. doi: 10.1002/mdc3.12236. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources