According to UCLA Health, women athletes are more prone than men when it comes to debilitating knee injuries. There are more ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries in women’s soccer than any other sport. The ACL is an important ligament that supports the knee.
David McAllister is an orthopedic surgeon and chief of the UCLA HealthSports Medicine and Head Team physician for UCLA Athletics. He says that females are two-to-10 times more likely than male athletes to tear their ACL but so far physicians have not been able to determine why that is the case.
There are about 400,000 ACL surgeries each year for men and women. Dr. David McAllister is collaborating with UCLA’s School of Engineering to investigate an implant that can be developed to prevent recurrent injury in athletes. The goal is to identify high-risk athletes, such as those who have suffered an ACL injury and are undergoing an ACL reconstruction, and implant a small prosthetic device that would restrict the motion in the knee that causes the injury but not slow down the individual.
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