• Guangxin Guo, Shengji Xie, Feihong Cai, Xu Zhou, Jianghan Xu, Boyi Wu, Guanghui Wu, Ran Xiao, Xiruo Xu, Ping Lu, and Min Fang.
• School of Acupuncture-moxibustion and Tuina, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, China.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2021 Aug 13; 100 (32): e26925e26925.

BackgroundAthletic injuries have been a major area of interest in the field of sports and clinical medicine. Implemented on people's skin, muscles, and joints as an important part of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), massage therapy has a positive effect on athletic injuries. This protocol is to provide the methods used to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of massage therapy for patients with athletic injuries.MethodsA systematic search will be performed in the following electronic databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of massage therapy in treating athletic injuries: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE and four Chinese databases (CNKI, Wan Fang, CBMdisc and VIP). Each database will be searched from inception to July 2021. The entire process will include study selection, data extraction, risk of bias assessment and meta-analysis.ResultsA high-quality synthesis of current evidence of massage therapy for patients with athletic injuries will be provided.ConclusionsThis systematic review will provide evidence for assessing the credibility of massage therapy for patients with athletic injuries.Dissemination And EthicsThe results of this review will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication. This review does not require ethical approval because all the data used in this systematic review and meta-analysis have already been published. Furthermore, all of these data will be analyzed anonymously during the review process.Inplasy Registration NumberINPLASY202170066.Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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