Gender Differences in Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries of the Knee
Knee injuries in female athletes are on the rise, and ACL injuries are one of the most common severe knee injuries in sports. They affect the lives of more than 250,000 people in the United States each year, most of them women. This is due to not only an increase in female participation in athletics, but also as a result of multiple inherent differences between males and females anatomically, biomechanically, and biologically. The highest incidence of ACL injuries is in individuals 15 to 25 years old who participate in sports which require jumping, pivoting, and rapid starting and stopping such as basketball, soccer, and field hockey. Most studies show that females are about five times more likely to sustain a rupture of the ACL than males.