Importance of Functional Performance and Psychological Readiness for Return to Pre-injury Level of Sports 1 Year After ACL Reconstruction in Competitive Athletes

Review written by Mick Hughes info

Key Points

  1. Return to pre-injury level of sport following ACLR is a major milestone for ACLR patients, however return to sport rates are as low as 55% in competitive athletes.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

Returning back to pre-injury level of sport following ACL reconstruction (ACLR) is a major milestone for the ACLR athlete. Unfortunately, ACLR does not guarantee a successful return to the sporting arena, with one meta-analysis showing that 65% of non-elite athletes return to pre-injury level of sport and 55% return to a competitive level of sport (1).

Many factors contribute to returning to pre-injury levels of sport following ACLR, including muscular strength, functional performance, self-reported function ad psychological readiness. The authors of this paper looked at these factors and aimed to identify:

  1. Independent predictive factors of return to sport (RTS) at 1-year post-op in competitive athletes
  2. Optimal cut-off values for these factors

ACL reconstruction does not guarantee a successful return to the sporting arena.
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The findings from this paper add to the current body of literature which shows that psychological readiness is just as important as physical readiness for return to sport following ACL reconstruction.

METHODS

124 competitive athletes (50M, 74F) who had undergone a primary ACLR (mix of hamstring and BPTB autografts) with an average age of 17yrs (13-26yr range) were included in this study. All patients were competitive athletes at the time of their

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