History of Knee Injury can Bolster Risk of Future Surgery

A significantly increased rate of subsequent knee injury and surgery exists for college athletes if they have a previous history of knee injury, according to recently published data.

“Moreover, these athletes tend to miss more days due to injury compared with other athletes, although differences in career length and games played were not significant,” Caitlyn M. Rugg, M.S., and colleagues wrote in a study.

Rugg and colleagues studied the evaluation forms of 456 Division I athletes prior to their participation in fall 2003 to spring 2008 seasons. Data was reviewed through medical records and the Sports Injury Monitoring System (SIMS) on the number of seasons and games played as well as days missed, diagnostic imaging, specifics of athletic injuries and surgical operations necessitated during their participants’ collegiate careers. The investigators found 104 athletes (22.8 percent) previously had orthopedic surgery; 48 athletes (10.5 percent) had previous knee surgeries (knee group), 16 athletes (3.5 percent) had previous anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions (ACL group) and 28 athletes (6.1 percent) had multiple prior surgeries (multiple group).

Days missed per season due to any injury (99 days and 121 days in the knee and ACL groups, respectively) and due to knee injury (45 days, 70 days and 11 days in knee, ACL and multiple groups, respectively) were increased for all surgical groups compared with controls (34 days and 7 days, respectively). Compared with the control cohort, athletes in the knee and ACL groups were 6.8 times and 19.6 times more likely to have a minimum of one knee injury and 14.4 and 892.9 times more likely to undergo knee surgery during their collegiate careers.

There was no statistically significant difference in length of collegiate athletic career between surgical and control cohorts, according to the study.

“Future work will include a cost-benefit analysis and prospective data collection to more precisely examine any differences between sex, sport and surgery type,” Rugg and colleagues wrote.