Men Prone To Knee Ligament Injury

 A new Swedish study finds that men in that country suffered more with Anterior Cruciate Ligament tears (ACL) than the Swedish women do. These kinds of ACL injuries (mostly instability of knee) are very common in United States.  

This new report was being published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. It involved 56,659 who were reported with cruciate ligament (CL) patients. The researchers say that works out to an average of 78 tears for every 100,000 Swedish citizens, in which 69% were male. The mean age was 32 years (ranging from 1-98 years) and 50 percent of the cohort was younger than 30 years.

There was an increased rate of injury among female patients younger than 20 years when compared to the male patients in that age group. Among the patients with CL injury, 36% underwent reconstructive surgery with one third of these performed within 1 year after injury. And those who underwent a surgery, 59 percent were male and the mean age was 27 years ranging from 5 -89 years.

Dr. Richard Nordenvall, of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm said, "I think the difference is that earlier studies studied at-risk populations. In those studies, women are more prone to get injured. The difference with this study is that we studied the general population."

This new study contradicts the earlier study that found, women and not men who are more susceptible to tearing their ACL.

Darin Padua, director of the Sports Medicine Research Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said, he was not surprised by the findings.

"No one can say for certain why women seem to tear their knee ligaments earlier in life compared to men," Padua said, but it probably has to do with the body's development and movement patterns.  "This helps to show that both men and women should be taking part in injury prevention programs."