Safety Screening Before Blood Flow Restriction Training: A Review of Reported Practice and Guidance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22548487Keywords:
Blood flow restriction training, Safety screening, Contraindications, Practitioner survey, Venous thromboembolism, Sports rehabilitationAbstract
Blood flow restriction (BFR) training has accumulated a strong safety record across large surveillance
surveys, yet published practitioner surveys consistently find pre-participation screening is applied
inconsistently, and a substantial minority of practitioners report no routine screening at all. Guidance
documents converge on a recognisable core of contraindications -- history of venous thromboembolism,
peripheral vascular disease, uncontrolled hypertension, and sickle cell trait or disease among them -- but
no single checklist has achieved uniform clinical adoption. This short communication synthesises the
published safety-surveillance literature, the practitioner-survey literature on current screening practice,
and the contraindication lists set out in major guidance documents, and sets out where the gap between
recommended and reported screening practice remains widest.
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