Safety of stroboscopic visual training in athletes: a mini-review and proposed framework for adverse-event reporting

Stroboscopic visual training (SVT) uses intermittently occluding eyewear to overload perceptual-cognitive processing, and it has been studied across a growing range of sporting contexts. Its efficacy on visuomotor and cognitive outcomes has now been synthesized by several systematic reviews and meta-analyses; its safety, by contrast, has received little dedicated scrutiny. Drawing on 27 studies of stroboscopic training in athletes identified from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, this mini-review examines how participant safety has been screened, monitored, and reported, and outlines the pathways through which the intervention could plausibly cause harm: visual-vestibular conflict and disorientation during dynamic tasks, transient injury risk arising from deliberately degraded vision, cognitive and mental fatigue, and the largely uncharacterized question of photosensitivity-related risk. We find that structured safety monitoring remains uncommon rather than entirely absent. Three studies clearly reported proactive symptom or adverse-event monitoring, while one additional study described safety oversight without structured proactive symptom surveillance. Only one study reported qualitative tolerability symptoms. The sparse and heterogeneous safety reporting therefore does not allow the safety profile of SVT to be characterized reliably. We propose a minimum screening and adverse-event-reporting framework for SVT, aligned with established harms-reporting standards. Addressing this blind spot is important for wider and safer implementation of SVT across populations and settings.