SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 21 (Reuters) -- Women have a much higher risk of a serious knee injury than men, according to one expert.
"More women are playing sports now than ever before, but even greater numbers are getting hurt," said study co-author Dr. Charles Blackadar, a resident at the Puget Sound Family Residency Program in Bremerton, Washington. He spoke on Friday to delegates attending the 50th Scientific Assembly of the American Academy of Family Physicians, held in San Francisco.
One serious knee injury involves the anterior cruciate ligament, a fibrous band of tissue that lies deep within the knee, and helps to connect the thighbone (femur) to the shinbone (tibia). Its main function is to provide stability to the knee, essentially preventing it from popping forward.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Blackadar said that he began to notice that more and more female athletes were coming to him with anterior cruciate injuries (ACIs). "It's a rather common occurrence," he said. In fact, National College Athletic Association experts now estimate that female basketball players have a six times higher risk of ACI compared with male players.
Blackadar says many athletes never return to their previous level of function after injury to the anterior cruciate ligament. "ACI can be quite debilitating, often requiring surgery to get a reconstruction of the ligament," he said.
So why are ACIs more common -- and more serious -- in women, as compared with men? Blackadar and other experts have a few theories. "Certainly one reason is that women tend to get less coaching, training, use of the athletic facilities" than men, he said. "We've known for a long time that people in better shape tend to get injured less."
But Blackadar adds that ACIs are still more common among highly-trained 'elite' women athletes than among super-fit men. "So we suspect that physiological differences exist." He speculates, for example, that the broader hips of women may cause them to land at more of an angle after a jump, compared with men, "which could put more stress on that ligament." He also pointed out that "per pound, women tend to have less muscle mass in the quadriceps and the hamstrings, which are generally considered protective of the anterior cruciate."
Active women can work to reduce their risk of ACI, Blackadar said. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that "jump training" -- a combination of stretching, weight training, and jumping exercises favored by Russian gymnasts -- have gotten their injury levels "down to the level of male athletes," Blackadar pointed out. And in general, he says women with long athletic histories are better protected against these types of injuries than are women who've just started to play vigorous sports.
