Adam E. Klein, MD - West Virginia State Medical Association

| Scientific Articleof having a previous ACL injuryversus those who arrived in 1996.DiscussionThe results of this study showa slight increase in the annualprevalence rate of ACL injuries in acollegiate population over a thirteenyear period ending in 2008. Neitherthe gender nor the sport of theparticipant was a predictive of theTable 1. ACL Injury by Sport and Genderpresence of an ACL injury at the timeof the preparticipation examination.As the large majority of athletespresenting for a preparticipationexamination at our institution aredirect high school graduates asopposed to transfers from anothercollege, our yearly prevalencecould be a reflection of changes inthe incidence of ACL injuries inhigh school athletics. Most of theliterature on high school knee injuriescover the time period between 1995and 2006 4,8,10,11 corresponding wellwith the 1996-2008 time frame inour study. Comparison of overalldata between high school andcollege is difficult, though, becausemost studies, either high schoolor collegiate, focus primarily onthe incidence of ACL injuries inbasketball and soccer alone. Also,there is limited high school dataon the rate of ACL injuries overtime as most studies examineonly total number of injuriesduring a specific time period.Micheli et al 4 did study thenumber of high school athletesundergoing ACL reconstructivesurgery for soccer and basketballfrom 1992-1997. Their data showedan increase over time in the numberof ACL surgeries for both gendersbut females had a significantly higherincidence of surgery over males inboth soccer and basketball. 4 Otherstudies 8,10-12 also support a higherincidence of knee surgeries in femalehigh school athletes compared totheir male counterparts. Figuresfrom the National Federation ofState High School Associationsshow a 61.3% increase in thenumber of females participatingin high school soccer from 1995-2007 compared with an increasein male participation of 33.2%. 13Although not as large, most highschool sports also show increases inthe number of participants over thesame time period. A larger numberof competing high school athletescoupled with an increasing rate ofACL surgeries could result in moreathletes presenting to college witha prior ACL injury. Although ourstudy showed that sport and genderwere not predictive of a prior ACLinjury, it seems reasonable to assumethe increased annual prevalence ofinjury in our study is reflective of anunderlying rising incidence of injuryin high school athletics. AnotherJuly/August 2012 | Vol. 108 9