The effect of cold spray cryotherapy method on the shoulder joint position sense of healthy athletes

Application of cryotherapy modalities is common after an acute shoulder injury and as a part of rehabilitation. In sports events, the athlete may return to the game after treatment. The effects of cryotherapy on the shoulder joint position sense (SJPS) have been investigated in many studies. However, the research that used the cold spray for this purpose was not found. This study aimed to evaluate the immediate effect of using a short-term protocol of topical cold spray on shoulder joint position sense in healthy athletes. Thirty physically active academic volleyball players with no history of neurologic conditions or musculoskeletal injuries on the throwing (dominant) shoulder voluntarily participated in this study. A within-subjects design with pre-posttest and selective sampling were conducted in this study. They took part in a reconstruction of the shoulder joint angle test at two sessions; so that their performance accuracy in this reconstruction was evaluated first time without using cold spray and the second time after using cold spray. The paired t-test was employed for SJPS scores comparison. Assessment assumption was done with 95 percent significance and P ≤ 0.05. Despite a reduction in SJPS accuracy after using a short-term protocol of local cooling, there was no significant difference between the error of the estimated angle before and after cryotherapy (P > 0.05). It appears that the use of a short-term protocol of topical cold spray only has an immediate effect on the more surface receptors, while the deeper receptors such as muscle spindles and joint receptors which have a key role in joint position sense are not affected.