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Month: April 2017

Knee injury

Factors to Consider After Knee Injury

Returning to Activity, Physical Therapy, and Neuromuscular Fatigue   Neuromuscular fatigue has been implicated as a significant problem for individuals returning to sport following an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and reconstruction.  Due to the high rate of re-injury in those that have had an ACL reconstruction, one hypothesis is that neuromuscular fatigue will negatively impact strength performance, postural stability (single leg balance), and biomechanics during jumping and landing.  It blows my mind that a female athlete with an ACL tear is 16 times more likely than a healthy female athlete to tear an ACL again. The interplay between a previous injury, the resulting changes to the input to the brain, modified motor planning, and re-injury is an interesting development in research.  Today I wanted to dive a little more into fatigue, its impact on biomechanics, and how physical therapy and strength training can start to augment the problem. There

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visual dominance process after a knee injury

The Effect of Knee Injury on the Brain

Physical Therapy Research   The connection between your knee, an injury, and the brain is not straightforward.  However, when you hurt your knee or any other joint there can be issues that lead to future problems. A recent article dove into this topic: Grooms D, Appelbaum G, Onate J. Neuroplasticity following anterior cruciate ligament injury: a framework for visual-motor training approaches in rehabilitation. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2015;45(5):381-393. ​Why is this important for physical therapy? The control of our body is dependent on three systems: visual, vestibular, and somatosensory.  The visual system contribution is obvious – the eyes.  Due to changes in information coming from the body (somatosensory) due to the ACL tear, the motor control system becomes more reliant on the eyes.   If we focus on retraining the body without disrupting this natural progression to visual dominance, the athlete will be at risk for injury as they progress to

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