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ACL injuries and women's athletics
ACL injuries appear to be
happening more frequently today than they did in the past. This is in
part because most athletes demand much more from themselves as compared
to a generation ago. As the speed and agility of athletes increases, so
does the amount of force that is sent through the ligaments of the knee.
Women appear to be particularly susceptible to ACL injuries, and there
is an ongoing debate in the sports medicine community about why this may
be the case. In 1995, an article was published in the American Journal
of Sports Medicine that found that female basketball players in the NCAA
tore their ACLs four times more often than male basketball players. In
the same study, women who played NCAA soccer sustained ACL injuries twice
as often as male soccer players. While researchers have suggested that
the increased rate of ACL injuries in women may be due to differences
in ligament strength, anatomy of the knee, jumping ability, muscle strength
and coordination, there is not a uniformly accepted reason for why this
occurs. As ACL injuries have become more common, more and more research
is being done on how to prevent them.
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