Effect of heat and cold applications on elbow proprioception

Purpose: Importance of proprioception in the treatment and prevention of sports injuries has become increasingly clear. Outcome of treatments are increased through proprioceptive rehabilitation, and re-injury risk is reduced. It is also believed that incidence of injury may be reduced by using pre-injury proprioceptive education. Bracing, muscle fatigue, exercises and surgery has been shown to affect proprioception level. Little is known about the effect of heat and cold application on proprioceptive capability which is the most commonly used treatment modalities on sportive rehabilitation. Purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cold and heat application on elbow Proprioception in healthy volunteers whose activity levels are between Tegner 5-8.Materials and Methods: A total of 82 healthy volunteers (35 women, 47 men) whose ages were ranged between 18 and 28 years (av: 20.93±2.13 ) were included in the study. Dominant extremity was right side in all subjects and all the subjects were student in High School of Physical Education and Sports with a Tegner activity level of 5-8. Proprioception of the dominant elbow (right) was measured by using a digital goniometer with the technique of active joint position sense at the beginning of the study, following cold application and hot application with one week interval, respectively. Two target angles were defined 30 and 60 degrees of elbow flexion. Statistical analyses were done by using GLM Repeated Measures and Paired Samples t-tests, Pearson Correlation.Results: Reproduction errors were significantly decreased following hot application in both target angles (p<0.017), which means increased proprioceptive acuity of the elbow. Following cold application, significantly increased reproduction error were found in one of the two target angles (p<0.017) as a result of proprioceptive deterioration.Conclusion: We obtained increased elbow Proprioception following hot application but, a decrease following cold in healthy volunteers in whom Tegner activity levels between 5-8. These findings are seems to be promising and may be useful in prevention and treatment of sports injuries, if supported by future studies.