Höfundar:
Mohammadhossein Ghasemi, Haraldur Björn Sigurðsson, Þórarinn Sveinsson, Kristín Briem
Introduction: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is an injury sustained mostly by young athletes participating in sports involving landing and cutting movements and it typically occurs in a short time-frame right after foot-ground contact. The knee sagittal angle (KSA) is a potential risk factor that has not been widely assessed within the injury time-frame. This study aimed to prospectively investigate sex-dependent changes the KSA during a five-year period, captured during performance of drop jump (DJ) and cutting maneuver (CM) tasks during initial foot-ground contact.
Methods: We recruited 293 handball and soccer players (9-12 years old) to perform both tasks, of which 103 subjects continued sports participation and returned five years later to repeat the test procedure. Marker-based motion capture and force plates were used for data collection. A mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA) for repeated measures was used for statistical analysis for each task.
Results: There was a significant interaction between sex and age for both tasks (P<0.001 for both). Boys and girls demonstrated respectively an increase (3.2°) and decrease (3.7°) in KSA values during DJ from pre-adolescence to adolescence age. While KSA values during CM increased for both sexes in adolescence compared to pre-adolescence age, this increase was higher in boys (9.8°) than girls (6.1°).
Conclusions: Decreased knee flexion angle in adolescent girls may indicate using an “unsafe strategy” during DJ and CM tasks and may be associated with increased risk of ACL injuries, although future studies are needed to assess the KSA and account for other biomechanical factors.