Time to Stabilization of Anterior Cruciate Ligament--Reconstructed Versus Healthy Knees in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Female Athletes (Original Research) (Report‪)‬

Many health care professionals face the challenge of preventing anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in female collegiate athletes and rehabilitating those who have ACL injuries. In 1995, using injury surveillance, Arendt and Dick1 published the first study establishing greater risk for ACL injury in women than men in basketball and soccer. In a more recent study, Mihata et a1 (2) updated the male-female ACL injury comparison by adding men's and women's lacrosse and using information from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Injury Surveillance System. Despite increased levels of fitness and years of participation for women and the introduction of ACL injury-prevention programs in many women's athletics programs over 15 years, they found that female collegiate athletes continued to injure their ACLs at greater rates than their male counterparts. They also found that, between 1989 and 2004, the rate of ACL injury in women was 3 times greater than in men for soccer and 4 times greater than in men for basketball. Differences in dynamic postural control during landing have been proposed as contributing factors to ACL injuries in women compared with men. Women tend to land with greater knee extension, (3-5) knee abduction, (6-9) and hip internal rotation (3,10) than men; the latter 2 recently have been associated with weak hip musculature. (3,ll) Specific to sporting activity, Salci et al (5) found that, when landing from a 40-cm spike, 60-cm spike, or block, female collegiate volleyball players displayed less knee and hip flexion and greater vertical ground reaction forces (GRFs) than male volleyball players. These positions have been linked to mechanisms for ACL injury, (2,10,12) substantiating the higher incidences of ACL injury in women than in men.