Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic & Related Surgery
Original ArticlePerformance Outcomes of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in the National Basketball Association
Section snippets
Methods
The National Basketball Athletic Trainers Association maintains a database of all injuries and illnesses occurring in NBA players that (1) required physician referral and/or prescription medication, (2) resulted in a practice or game being missed, or (3) caused emergency care to be rendered to the athlete. These records are based on a standardized, league-wide injury-reporting instrument that is completed by each team's athletic trainer. The primary information collected includes the player's
Results
Of the 1,144 players in the database during the seasons studied, we identified 31 players (2.7%) who underwent 32 ACL reconstructions. From this group, 4 players were excluded from further analysis: One player sustained a non–sports-related injury, one player did not participate in a league game before injury (training camp injury), and two patients had multiple ACL injuries to the same knee. A total of 27 cases (0.5%) were used for further analysis (Table 1). Of the 27 patients, 21 (78%)
Player Outcomes
Although complete ACL injuries are relatively rare in the NBA, with a game-related injury rate of 0.1 per 1,000 athletic exposures, the rate of return to sports participation and the effect on player performance have not been previously evaluated.1 In a previous NBA study, ACL injuries resulted in 1,997 games and 3,703 days (practices and games) missed.1
The results of our study are similar to those of a previous study of NFL running backs and wide receivers after ACL reconstruction. We found
Conclusions
After ACL reconstruction in 27 basketball players, 22% did not return to a sanctioned NBA game. Performance decreased by more than 1 PER point in 44% of the patients returning to play, although the changes were not statistically significant relative to the comparison group.
Acknowledgment
The authors thank the National Basketball Athletic Trainers Association for their assistance in collecting these data and Stephen G. Busfield for creating the figures.
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Cited by (0)
The authors report no conflict of interest.