Sports injuries are injuries that occur during sport, athletic activities, or exercising. In the United States, there are approximately 30 million teenagers and children who participate in some form of organized sport. Of those, about three million athletes age 14 years and under experience a sports injury annually. According to a study performed at Stanford University, 21 percent of the injuries observed in elite college athletes caused the athlete to miss at least one day of sport, and approximately 77 percent of these injuries involved the knee, lower leg, ankle, or foot. In addition to those sport injuries, the leading cause of death related to sports injuries is traumatic head or neck occurrences.
In humans and other primates, the knee joins the thigh with the leg and consists of two joints: one between the femur and tibia, and one between the femur and patella. It is the largest joint in the human body. The knee is a modified hinge joint, which permits flexion and extension as well as slight internal and external rotation. The knee is vulnerable to injury and to the development of osteoarthritis.
A sprain is a soft tissue injury of the ligaments within a joint, often caused by a sudden movement abruptly forcing the joint to exceed its functional range of motion. Ligaments are tough, inelastic fibers made of collagen that connect two or more bones to form a joint and are important for joint stability and proprioception, which is the body's sense of limb position and movement. Sprains may be mild, moderate, or severe, with the latter two classes involving some degree of tearing of the ligament. Sprains can occur at any joint but most commonly occur in the ankle, knee, or wrist. An equivalent injury to a muscle or tendon is known as a strain.
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of a pair of cruciate ligaments in the human knee. The two ligaments are also called "cruciform" ligaments, as they are arranged in a crossed formation. In the quadruped stifle joint, based on its anatomical position, it is also referred to as the cranial cruciate ligament. The term cruciate translates to cross. This name is fitting because the ACL crosses the posterior cruciate ligament to form an "X". It is composed of strong, fibrous material and assists in controlling excessive motion. This is done by limiting mobility of the joint. The anterior cruciate ligament is one of the four main ligaments of the knee, providing 85% of the restraining force to anterior tibial displacement at 30 and 90° of knee flexion. The ACL is the most injured ligament of the four located in the knee.
A soft tissue injury is the damage of muscles, ligaments and tendons throughout the body. Common soft tissue injuries usually occur from a sprain, strain, a one-off blow resulting in a contusion or overuse of a particular part of the body. Soft tissue injuries can result in pain, swelling, bruising and loss of function.
The drawer test is used in the initial clinical assessment of suspected rupture of the cruciate ligaments in the knee.
Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction is a surgical tissue graft replacement of the anterior cruciate ligament, located in the knee, to restore its function after an injury. The torn ligament can either be removed from the knee, or preserved before reconstruction through an arthroscopic procedure. ACL repair is also a surgical option. This involves repairing the ACL by re-attaching it, instead of performing a reconstruction. Theoretical advantages of repair include faster recovery and a lack of donor site morbidity, but randomised controlled trials and long-term data regarding re-rupture rates using contemporary surgical techniques are lacking.
The lateral collateral ligament is an extrinsic ligament of the knee located on the lateral side of the knee. Its superior attachment is at the lateral epicondyle of the femur ; its inferior attachment is at the lateral aspect of the head of fibula. The LCL is not fused with the joint capsule. Inferiorly, the LCL splits the tendon of insertion of the biceps femoris muscle.
Cruciate ligaments are pairs of ligaments arranged like a letter X. They occur in several joints of the body, such as the knee joint, wrist joint and the atlanto-axial joint. In a fashion similar to the cords in a toy Jacob's ladder, the crossed ligaments stabilize the joint while allowing a very large range of motion.
A sprained ankle is an injury where sprain occurs on one or more ligaments of the ankle. It is the most commonly occurring injury in sports, mainly in ball sports such as basketball, volleyball, football, and tennis.
An anterior cruciate ligament injury occurs when the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is either stretched, partially torn, or completely torn. The most common injury is a complete tear. Symptoms include pain, an audible cracking sound during injury, instability of the knee, and joint swelling. Swelling generally appears within a couple of hours. In approximately 50% of cases, other structures of the knee such as surrounding ligaments, cartilage, or meniscus are damaged.
Cold compression therapy, also known as hilotherapy, combines two of the principles of rest, ice, compression, elevation to reduce pain and swelling from a sports or activity injury to soft tissues and is recommended by orthopedic surgeons following surgery. The therapy is especially useful for sprains, strains, pulled muscles and pulled ligaments.
The unhappy triad, also known as a blown knee among other names, is an injury to the anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, and meniscus. Analysis during the 1990s indicated that this 'classic' O'Donoghue triad is actually an unusual clinical entity among athletes with knee injuries. Some authors mistakenly believe that in this type of injury, "combined anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligament disruptions that were incurred during athletic endeavors" always present with concomitant medial meniscus injury. However, the 1990 analysis showed that lateral meniscus tears are more common than medial meniscus tears in conjunction with sprains of the ACL.
A tear of a meniscus is a rupturing of one or more of the fibrocartilage strips in the knee called menisci. When doctors and patients refer to "torn cartilage" in the knee, they actually may be referring to an injury to a meniscus at the top of one of the tibiae. Menisci can be torn during innocuous activities such as walking or squatting. They can also be torn by traumatic force encountered in sports or other forms of physical exertion. The traumatic action is most often a twisting movement at the knee while the leg is bent. In older adults, the meniscus can be damaged following prolonged 'wear and tear'. Especially acute injuries can lead to displaced tears which can cause mechanical symptoms such as clicking, catching, or locking during motion of the joint. The joint will be in pain when in use, but when there is no load, the pain goes away.
A high ankle sprain, also known as a syndesmotic ankle sprain (SAS), is a sprain of the syndesmotic ligaments that connect the tibia and fibula in the lower leg, thereby creating a mortise and tenon joint for the ankle. High ankle sprains are described as high because they are located above the ankle. They comprise approximately 15% of all ankle sprains. Unlike the common lateral ankle sprains, when ligaments around the ankle are injured through an inward twisting, high ankle sprains are caused when the lower leg and foot externally rotates.
Medial knee injuries are the most common type of knee injury. The medial ligament complex of the knee consists of:
Paige Amber Hadley is an Australian international netball player. Primarily a wing attack and centre player, Hadley is a member of the Australian national team and plays in the ANZ Championship for the New South Wales Swifts, for which she also serves as the club's Australian Netball Players’ Association delegate.
Volleyball is a game played between two opposing sides, with six players on each team, where the players use mainly their hands to hit the ball over a net and try to make the ball land on the opposing team's side of the court. Volleyball is played by over 800 million people worldwide, making it one of the most popular sports in the world. Volleyball has some risks involved with it because there are some injuries which occur to players that are quite common; these include ankle injuries, shoulder injuries, foot injuries and knee injuries.
In Australian rules football, injuries are common and consistent due to the nature of the game as a contact sport. The Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury is one of the three major and common injuries which occur in the sport. The ACL injury can have long-term effects on the player, not only in physical activity but also in their own daily lives in the future. Studies have attempted to understand and find prevention techniques for ACL injuries, but the scarcity of data precludes any conclusions for male athletes. Female athletes, however, have shown reductions in the rate of ACL injuries through the use of strength training and technique improvement. Once a player has injured their ACL, there is a very high possibility that the injury can occur again to the same knee. There is also the chance of the opposite knee being injured due to the player protecting the reconstructed knee.
Running injuries affect about half of runners annually. The frequencies of various RRI depend on the type of running, such as speed and mileage. Some injuries are acute, caused by sudden overstress, such as side stitch, strains, and sprains. Many of the common injuries that affect runners are chronic, developing over longer periods as the result of overuse. Common overuse injuries include shin splints, stress fractures, Achilles tendinitis, Iliotibial band syndrome, Patellofemoral pain, and plantar fasciitis.
