TY - JOUR
T1 - Medio-lateral knee fluency in anterior cruciate ligament-injured athletes during dynamic movement trials
AU - Panos, Joseph A.
AU - Hoffman, Joshua T.
AU - Wordeman, Samuel C.
AU - Hewett, Timothy E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge funding support from the National Institutes of Health Grants R01-AR049735 , R01-AR055563 , and R01-AR056259 (PI: T.E.H.). We also acknowledge and thank Dr. Stephanie Di Stasi Roewer, Christopher Nagelli, Mike McNally, and the Sports Medicine Biodynamics Laboratory within the Sports Health and Performance Institute for their help with the data collection. Author contributions: J.A.P. analyzed clinical subject data, wrote, and edited the manuscript. J.T.H. recruited and tested clinical subjects and provided critical analysis and edits during the writing of the manuscript. S.C.W. recruited and tested clinical subjects and helped to edit the manuscript. T.E.H. conceived the study design and aims and provided critical analysis and edits during the writing of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/3/1
Y1 - 2016/3/1
N2 - Background Correction of neuromuscular impairments after anterior cruciate ligament injury is vital to successful return to sport. Frontal plane knee control during landing is a common measure of lower-extremity neuromuscular control and asymmetries in neuromuscular control of the knee can predispose injured athletes to additional injury and associated morbidities. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of anterior cruciate ligament injury on knee biomechanics during landing. Methods Two-dimensional frontal plane video of single leg drop, cross over drop, and drop vertical jump dynamic movement trials was analyzed for twenty injured and reconstructed athletes. The position of the knee joint center was tracked in ImageJ software for 500 milliseconds after landing to calculate medio-lateral knee motion velocities and determine normal fluency, the number of times per second knee velocity changed direction. The inverse of this calculation, analytical fluency, was used to associate larger numerical values with fluent movement. Findings Analytical fluency was decreased in involved limbs for single leg drop trials (P = 0.0018). Importantly, analytical fluency for single leg drop differed compared to cross over drop trials for involved (P < 0.001), but not uninvolved limbs (P = 0.5029). For involved limbs, analytical fluency values exhibited a stepwise trend in relative magnitudes. Interpretation Decreased analytical fluency in involved limbs is consistent with previous studies. Fluency asymmetries observed during single leg drop tasks may be indicative of abhorrent landing strategies in the involved limb. Analytical fluency differences in unilateral tasks for injured limbs may represent neuromuscular impairment as a result of injury.
AB - Background Correction of neuromuscular impairments after anterior cruciate ligament injury is vital to successful return to sport. Frontal plane knee control during landing is a common measure of lower-extremity neuromuscular control and asymmetries in neuromuscular control of the knee can predispose injured athletes to additional injury and associated morbidities. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of anterior cruciate ligament injury on knee biomechanics during landing. Methods Two-dimensional frontal plane video of single leg drop, cross over drop, and drop vertical jump dynamic movement trials was analyzed for twenty injured and reconstructed athletes. The position of the knee joint center was tracked in ImageJ software for 500 milliseconds after landing to calculate medio-lateral knee motion velocities and determine normal fluency, the number of times per second knee velocity changed direction. The inverse of this calculation, analytical fluency, was used to associate larger numerical values with fluent movement. Findings Analytical fluency was decreased in involved limbs for single leg drop trials (P = 0.0018). Importantly, analytical fluency for single leg drop differed compared to cross over drop trials for involved (P < 0.001), but not uninvolved limbs (P = 0.5029). For involved limbs, analytical fluency values exhibited a stepwise trend in relative magnitudes. Interpretation Decreased analytical fluency in involved limbs is consistent with previous studies. Fluency asymmetries observed during single leg drop tasks may be indicative of abhorrent landing strategies in the involved limb. Analytical fluency differences in unilateral tasks for injured limbs may represent neuromuscular impairment as a result of injury.
KW - ACL injury prevention
KW - Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury
KW - dynamic landing knee kinematics
KW - frontal plane knee biomechanics
KW - knee fluency
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U2 - 10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2016.01.010
DO - 10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2016.01.010
M3 - Article
C2 - 26895446
AN - SCOPUS:84962026486
SN - 0268-0033
VL - 33
SP - 7
EP - 12
JO - Clinical Biomechanics
JF - Clinical Biomechanics
ER -