Functional Tests and Their Reliability for Return to Sport After Shoulder Injuries: A Review Study

Background: understanding the relationships between exercise and performance tests is crucialfor the sports rehabilitation expert.objectives: to comprehensively review functional tests and their reliability for return to sport(rts) after shoulder injuries.methods: during this research, a comprehensive review of the functional tests for rts aftershoulder injuries was performed by searching the web of science, pedro, google scholar,pubmed, sciencedirect, scopus, and cinahl databases with the keywords shoulder rts,return to play, upper limb and shoulder functional tests from 2000 to june 2021. english wasused in this search. after gathering the research results, first, the titles and then the summary ofthe research papers were studied. if the research papers meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria,their results will be utilized in the study of review otherwise they will be excluded.results: when searching the texts, 123 research papers were found, after deleting 11 identicaltitles, 112 abstracts were chosen for review. after analyzing the abstracts, 79 research paperswere removed and 33 research papers were selected for full study. after reviewing the fulltextresearch papers, 21 research papers were removed and 12 research papers were selectedfrom among the research papers that were very closely related to the subject under study. manyfunctional tests exist, but few have been studied to evaluate the rts after a shoulder injury.conclusion: functional tests can assist in estimating when an athlete will rts or exercisewithout restrictions. therefore, according to the results of the current research, functional testscan be an effective tool to assess rts after shoulder injuries, but due to the limitations and lackof information in this area, further studies are required to be conducted. therefore, caution shouldbe taken and a general rule should not be drawn for all shoulder injuries