Postural control is altered in females with excessive medial knee displacement

ABSTRACT

Knee valgus motion observed during landing tasks has been proposed as a predictor of future knee injury. It mainly involves excess motion in the frontal plane and is known to be greater in individuals with excessive medial knee displacement (MKD). This affects postural control during sports manoeuvres. Previous sports medicine-related research suggests that the nature of these fluctuations provide rich and more sensitive information to identify risk of (re)injury. We aimed to investigate the fluctuations of the centre of pressure (CoP) in individuals with and without excessive MKD. Twenty females (12 controls; 8 excessive MKD) were instructed to perform single-leg landing tasks from three different directions. The participants landed on a force plate and stayed still for 20 seconds. The fluctuations of the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral directions of the CoP were determined through the calculation of Sample Entropy. Mixed-model ANOVAs (3 [Landing Direction] x 2 [Group]) were used. We have found that only the entropy of the medial-lateral direction was different between groups. Individuals with excessive MKD exhibited an increase in entropy values, indicating greater randomness in CoP fluctuations. This suggests a decreased ability to adapt to environmental demands that likely result in an increased risk of injury.

KEYWORDS:

• Sports Medicine
• valgus
• balance
• variability
• entropy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Vaz was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (PTDC/SAU-DES/31297/2017). Dr. Stergiou was supported by the Center for Research in Human Movement Variability and the National Institutes of Health (P20GM109090, R15AG063106, and R01NS114282).