Two orthopaedic surgeons and one physio have all brought an alarming statistic to my attention: women are up to 7 times more likely than men to tear their ACLs - dammit! Being the curious creature that I am, I've been trying to find out why. I haven't had a chance to ask the first surgeon, the physio doesn't know, and today the second surgeon kindly shed some light about some current academic theories: women land differently to men when they jump, we have a different pelvis size, hormonal cycles, different body shape, and different bone size around the knee (the gap that the ACL sits in is narrower in women), just to name a few. So maybe I'm not as clumsy as I think... A quick google search brings up a bit of quite recent literature on this topic, and mostly from US universities. Perhaps a possible topic for my next PhD??
Dr Knee mentioned another statistic that he himself finds alarming: 70-80% of the ACL reconstructions he has performed this year are on under 20 year olds! That's awfully young, and the reasons for this are even more unknown: perhaps because young people are physically larger than they used to be (overnutrition from too much spinach?), and the increase in weight is greater than the load expected by growing joints? Maybe evolution will slowly take place to alleviate this interesting trend, otherwise orthopaedic surgeons in developed countries will be laughing all the way from their consultation rooms to the operating theatres...
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