The anthropometric measurements as predisposing factor for noncontact anterior cruciate ligament injury in middle-aged women

Background: The causes of noncontact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury pose a great mystery in the orthopedic field.[1] About 100,000 ACL injuries are sustained annually in the United States of America, approximately 70% of the previously mentioned cases are of a noncontact origin.[2],[3],[4] For such a common injury, it will be a great effort to search and address possible modifiable risk factors associated with noncontact ACL injury to establish a preventive measures that will decrease the incidence of it. Hypothesis: The anthropometric measurements are risk factors for noncontact ACL injury. Materials and Methods: This study was held in a retrospective fashion, the population will include patients from our institution with a sample size of 2000 cases that will be filtered according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data analysis was performed by expertise. Data Collection: We used medical records of patient with noncontact ACL injury reconstruction for analysis and review. Data included anthropometric measurements (height, mass, gender, and age at the time of surgery). The targeted population for the study thus includes the following; patients who sustained ACL injuries. We obtained data from records of around 2000 patients with noncontact ACL injuries from 1996 to 2012, which were filtered according to inclusion and exclusions criteria. Inclusion criteria include (1) patients with noncontact ACL injury and (2) subjects with an age range from 25 to 55. Exclusion criteria are (1) traumatic ACL injury, (2) partial ACL injuries, (3) previous ACL reconstructions, (4) multiligamentous injuries, and (5) acute or previous hamstring injuries. Data Analysis: In our analysis, the sample size was 468 subjects, 212 among contacts (45.3%), and 256 among noncontact (54.7%) although we could have benefit from a large number of female subjects (male 98.9%, female 1.1%) to compare the results with male subjects, the current number that we have is proved to be a good predictive model. The mean age of subjects, 27.16 years for subjects with contact ACL injury, standard deviation (SD) = 6.330 and 28.00 years for subjects with noncontact ACL injury, SD = 6.873, and P = 0.172. Results: Incidence of ACL injury in obese and nonobese subjects: We define obesity in our study as subject with a body mass index (BMI) >30 is considered as an obese while a subject with a BMI <30 considered as nonobese, the results has showed that subjects who sustained contact ACL injury and obese = 27%, subjects with contact ACL injury and nonobese = 73.2%. While subjects with noncontact ACL injury and obese = 27%; nonobese = 73%. Noncontact ACL versus contact ACL injury in terms of anthropometric measurements: The anthropometric measurements that we study are height, weight, BMI. There was no main significant difference of anthropometric measurement on contact and noncontact ACL injuries groups. We have found that the mean of the weight of contact ACL injury group = 79.64 ± 15.6 and in noncontact ACL injury group was found to be 80.314 ± 16.4 with a P = 0.664. The other variable is height: in contact ACL injury group, the mean was 170.406, and in noncontact ACL injury group, it was 170.509, with P = 0.884. The last variable is BMI with mean 27.377 ± 5.05 among contact ACL injury, while 27.56 ± 5.21 among noncontact ACL injury group. Conclusion: In this study, we addressed the relationship between anthropometric measurement and noncontact ACL injury in middle-aged patient. Our results show that BMI, weight, height are not significantly considered as risk factor for noncontact ACL injury. There was no comparison in men and women.