Rehabilitation of Long-Standing Groin Pain in Athletes: A Scoping Review of Exercise Content and Reporting

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate reporting quality and exercise characteristics of exercise-based rehabilitation programs for athletes with long-standing groin pain. DESIGN: Scoping review. LITERATURE SEARCH: We searched the Scopus, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Google Scholar databases in March 2025. STUDY SELECTION CRITERIA: Original research studies including exercise-based rehabilitation programs for athletes (≥18 years) with long-standing groin pain. DATA SYNTHESIS: Reporting quality was evaluated according to the Consensus on Exercise Reporting Template (CERT) (score range of 0-19) and the Fundamental Resistance Exercise Descriptors (FRED) (score range of 0-13) recommendations. Intervention content was extracted. RESULTS: Twenty-two reports were included. Four reports used the same rehabilitation protocol and were considered as one study. According to the CERT, three studies had moderate and sixteen studies had low reporting quality. The mean CERT score was 7.7 (SD ±4.3, range 1 to 14), and the mean FRED score was 3.7 (SD ±1.8, range 0 to 7). The CERT items reported by most studies were whether exercises were generic or tailored (89%), the setting (68%), and whether there were non-exercise components (68%). The FRED items reported by most studies were the repetition and set number (73%), the session number per day/week (73%), and the program duration (63%). CONCLUSION: The quality of reporting in the rehabilitation of long-standing groin pain was generally poor and should be improved to help replication in future research and clinical practice. Most protocols included exercises targeting the injured and uninjured structures, tending towards a more general exercise prescription for rehabilitation of long-standing groin pain in athletes.