Athletes with an ACLR (anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction) often experience second ACL ruptures due to asymmetries. In professional sports, this impacts both the athlete and the team in terms of competition and costs. The risk of re-injury should be minimized before letting an athlete return to play.
There is a consensus among clinicians that time since surgery alone is not indicative of full functional recovery and that a broader assessment is necessary. However, current methods for assessing risk of re-injury are expensive and complicated (motion capture systems + load modelling) or don’t provide objective data (hop tests). Risk of re-injury is also determined by psychological factors within athletes like trust in their knee’s stability. With a lack of concrete and quantitative data, athletes have a hard time fully trusting in their operated knee, which leads to uneven loading and an increased risk of re-injury.
novel‘s loadsol pro in-shoe force measuring system allows you to reliably measure how your athletes perform on dynamic tests by providing force data to assist in the risk assessment for reinjury in any environment.
Use the loadsol pro system to measure forces during different scientifically validated jumping tasks to inform you about your athlete’s knee health.
During stop jumps, measure the impulse and force during jump-off. Our analysis of this data allows you to draw conclusions about established risk factors of re-injury.
During single-leg drop jumps, analyze the jump height, ground contact time and the limb symmetry to assess your athletes’ functional symmetry.
Show our comprehensive analysis to your athletes to provide them with feedback during rehabilitation process.
The loadsol pro system measures validated force data reliably at a 200 Hz resolution. This allows for accurate measurements during dynamic movements which can be captured anywhere.
With our video mode syncing option, you can easily identify relevant parts of the measurement using video.
Our analysis software provides you with a simple display of all the important measures for a return-to-sport assessment and an interpretation of the data.
Create a video of your measurement and compare video and force data. With loadapp you can film any measurement you are making and display the force data. This way you can easily track events during measurement.
Any system used, should be validated and work reliably. Make sure that the validation considers the force measurement and not just derived and simplified parameters like “contact time”, etc.
by Robin M. Queen, Alexander T. Peebles, Kristen E. Renner
Screening for deficits in landing mechanics is important for both injury prevention as well as recovery. Stiff landings, defined by high peak impact forces, can prospectively predict primary anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in adolescent athletes. When returning to sport following an ACL reconstruction and 6–12 months of physical therapy, athletes have significant side-to-side asymmetries, characterized by offloading the surgical limb and overloading the non-surgical limb. High kinetic asymmetry in athletes returning to sport following an ACL reconstruction is prospectively associated with an increased likelihood of sustaining a second ACL injury to the surgical or contralateral limb
This study suggests that loadsol is a valid and repeatable device to use in the assessment of ground-based kinetics and kinetic symmetry during hopping and jumping tasks.
by Alexander T. Peebles, Kevin R. Ford, Jeffrey B. Taylor, Joseph M. Hart, Laura P. Sands & Robin M. Queen
Athletes returning to sport following ACLR have a 30–35% chance of sustaining a second ACL injury to either the surgical or contralateral limb. Asymmetrical limb loading during bilateral landing tasks, where the surgical limb load is decreased and the non-surgical limb load is increased, is extremely common among ACLR patients and is believed to contribute to this heightened risk of reinjury. As asymmetrical limb loading during landing does not simply resolve with time during rehabilitation and following return to sport, it is imperative that limb loading symmetry be quantified and improved during post-operative physical therapy.
loadsol has been validated against embedded force plates for measuring peak impact force, loading rate, and impulse and for assessing load symmetry using these measures. The loadsol could therefore be useful for assessing limb loading symmetry in clinical settings.
by Kristen E. Renner, DS Blaise Williams & Robin M. Queen
After ACL reconstructions (ACLR), many patients suffer from inflammations in their operated knee even years after the operation. ACLR patients also often show altered biomechanics in e.g. walking which can increase the risk for the development of musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis in the long run. Inflammation and altered biomechanics seem to interact closely. In particular, increasing grades of effusion-synovitis (an imaging marker of inflammation) are associated with asymmetry in the loading rates of the healthy vs. operated leg during normal walking in patients 1-5 years post ACLR.
This study shows that loadsol can be used to assess differences in walking biomechanics that are correlated with markers of inflammation in ACLR patients. The loadsol could therefore be used to assess long-term knee inflammation in ACLR patients.
by Kristen E. Renner, DS Blaise Williams & Robin M. Queen
This study shows that loadsol can be used to assess load based parameters during various walking and running tasks. This insole has the potential to be used in the assessment and tracking of various clinical populations recovering from injuries and surgeries. loadsol could also be used to assess changes in load parameters in the clinical setting to track recovery and restoration of symmetric loading following a variety of surgical and nonsurgical interventions. Moreover, it can also be used when asking subjects to maintain a partial weight bearing protocol following surgery through setting load thresholds within the mobile application that can alert the subjects when they are placing more load on the foot than recommended during recovery.
