The keyboard instruments

摘要

Now that the field of performing arts medicine has been in existence for over three decades, we are approaching a key point: we should start to see more articles that bring together the data that have been collected from several studies in order to draw more robust conclusions. Review articles and their more structured relative, the meta-analysis, can help to improve our understanding of a particular topic, comparing and synthesizing the results of previous research that has been done on that subject area. One way this could be done would be to review the research that has been carried out on the performance-related problems associated with playing a particular instrument or group of instruments. While I am not going to do that myself, I hope that others will. In this editorial, I will do a very selective review of the play-ing-related musculoskeletal disorders (PRMDs) associated with one instrument group, focusing on the most played instrument in that group. More rigorous reviews in the future may come to different conclusions than will be found here, and whatever conclusions are reached with more formal methods will have a higher degree of certainty.