Effects of a stroboscopic visual perturbation on postural control in female athletes afterwards reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament

An ever increasing number of athletes of both sexes, but especially women, become subject to injuries of the anterior cruciate ligament and this causes major problems both at a sporting level, because it requires fairly long recovery times, especially if they have to undergo reconstruction; both on a psychological level. This was our starting point, so first of all try to understand the reason for such a high incidence in female athletes compared to the male counterpart, secondly to identify the reasons and causes that led to the increase of this type of injuries and finally understand if and which postural alterations and neurological adaptations have undergone. Therefore, once these extremes have been identified, we will be able to firstly set up a sports activity protocol that aims at the primary prevention of such injuries, and secondly, if the injury should still take place, set up an adequate rehabilitation protocol.

In order to obtain the greatest amount of information and useful data on the subject, we selected 30 female athletes, of which 15 healthy and operated on the anterior cruciate ligament, also associated with other structural repairs (eg meniscectomy). Other inclusion parameters used consist in the absence of previous injuries to the lower limbs and never having used stroboscopic glasses. These athletes were subjected to an experimental activity protocol that provided for the use of the aforementioned stroboscopic glasses, i.e. with variable intermittence (set by us) and a battery of 3 dynamic balance and coordination tests that the girls had to perform first without, then with the use of glasses until the completion of 3 correct tests for each athlete. To collect data we used a piezoelectric force platform during all tests, the data of the platform were recorded for 3 seconds from the moment of contact. All this up to the carrying out of 3 correct tests for each limb of the subjects of both groups.