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The article reports a study which was conducted to determine whether high knee abduction moment (pKAM) is associated with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in female athletes. A clinic-based algorithm developed by Myer and colleagues was used in the study. The results show that the pKAM was not associated with noncontact ACL injury in injured athletes.

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are immediately disabling, costly, take a significant amount of time to rehabilitate, and are associated with an increased risk of developing posttraumatic osteoarthritis of the knee. Specific multiplanar movement patterns of the lower extremity, such as those associated with the drop vertical jump (DVJ) test, have been shown to be associated with an increased risk of suffering noncontact ACL injuries. The Landing Error Scoring System (LESS) has been developed as a tool that can be applied to identify individuals who display at-risk movement patterns during the DVJ.Hypothesis: An increase in LESS score is associated with an increased risk of noncontact ACL injury.Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3.Methods: Over a 3-year interval, 5047 high school and college participants performed preseason DVJ tests that were recorded using commercial video cameras. All participants were followed for ACL injury during their sports season, and video data from injured participants and matched controls were then assessed with the LESS. Conditional logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association between LESS score and ACL injury risk in all participants as well as subgroups of female, male, high school, and college participants.Results: There was no relationship between the risk of suffering ACL injury and LESS score whether measured as a continuous or a categorical variable. This was the case for all participants combined (odds ratio, 1.04 per unit increase in LESS score; 95% confidence interval, 0.80-1.35) as well as within each subgroup (odds ratio range, 0.99-1.14).Conclusion: The LESS did not predict ACL injury in our cohort of high school and college athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Multivariate analysis that identifies the combination of risk factors associated with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) trauma is important because it provides insight into whether a variable has a direct causal effect on risk or an indirect effect that is mediated by other variables. It can also reveal risk factors that might not be evident in univariate analyses; if a variable’s effect is moderated by other variables, its association with risk may be apparent only after adjustment for the other variables. Most important, multivariate analyses can identify combinations of risk factors that are more predictive of risk than individual risk factors. Hypothesis: A diverse combination of risk factors predispose athletes to first-time noncontact ACL injury, and these relationships are different for male and female athletes. Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Athletes competing in organized sports at the high school and college levels participated in this study. Data from injured subjects (109 suffering an ACL injury) and matched controls (227 subjects) from the same athletic team were analyzed with multivariate conditional logistic regression to examine the effects of combinations of variables (demographic characteristics, joint laxity, lower extremity alignment, strength, and personality traits) on the risk of suffering their first ACL injury and to construct risk models. Results: For male athletes, increases in anterior-posterior displacement of the tibia relative to the femur (knee laxity), posterior knee stiffness, navicular drop, and a decrease in standing quadriceps angle were jointly predictive of suffering an ACL injury. For female athletes the combined effects of having a parent who had suffered an ACL injury and increases in anterior-posterior knee laxity and body mass index were predictive of ACL injury. Conclusion: Multivariate models provided more information about ACL injury risk than individual risk factors. Both male and female risk models included increased anterior-posterior knee laxity as a predictor of ACL injury but were otherwise dissimilar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research which investigated how competition level, type of sport, and athlete's sex influence first-time noncontact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury incidence. Topics addressed include the prevalence of ACL injuries in young athletes in the U.S., the use of National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System database as reference in assessing injury incidence rates, and the injury rate associated with soccer, basketball, and lacrosse.

The article discusses research which investigated femoral intercondylar notch morphometry in patients with first-time noncontact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. Topics explored include the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of participating ACL-injured patients, the outcome of the femoral notch measurement process, and the comparative analysis of femoral notch morphometry and ACL geometry.