| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to determine if a fear of reinjury and degree of current knee
pain, as measured by the Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia (TSK) and Knee Injury and
Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) respectively, were associated with a collegiate
athlete's decision to return to sport after suffering from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)
injury, having reconstructive surgery, and performing rehabilitation. The secondary
purpose of this study was to determine if the scores on the TSK varied among the athlete's
pain at time of injury, age at time of injury, an athlete's return to a pre-injury level of
activity, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) divisions, gender, graft type.
mechanism of injury, and months since the time of injury. The tertiary purpose of this
study was to determine if gender or the KOOS-Pain score affected an athlete's return to
pre-injury level of activity. The results of this study may contribute to improvements in
rehabilitation processes by orthopedic surgeons and sports medicine professionals in order
to decrease the fear of reinjury in those athletes that are being treated for injuries to the
ACL. Subjects for this study were selected from a group of 273 NCAA-sanctioned
Division I, II or III institutions. All subjects previously participated or were currently
participating in NCAA sanctioned athletics during their college career and had suffered an
ACL tear. Additionally, all of the subjects experienced ACL reconstruction surgery,
rehabilitation for the ACL injury and repair surgery, and were cleared by a physician.
Emails were sent to supervising athletic trainers of each randomly selected NCAA
institution asking for their assistance through the distribution of an informational letter to
potential study participants. The informational letter provided student-athletes with a link
allowing them to access the Survey Monkey™ questionnaire. which utilized questions taken
from the TSK and KOOS survey instruments, as well as a general questionnaire for
collection of limited demographic data for each participant. A total of 14 males and 35
females (n = 49) participated in the study. The information collected in the current study
revealed that the participants· fear of reinjury was only significantly related to an athlete's
degree of current knee pain and overall quality of life after suffering from an ACL tear,
reconstructive surgery, and rehabilitation. The results of the study indicated a statistical
significance (p < 0.05) between the participants' fear of reinjury and KOOS-Activities of
Daily Living (ADLs) and KOOS-Sports and Recreation (Sports/Rec). Third. the results
indicated a statistical significance between the fear of reinjury and the participants· age at
the time of the injury to the ACL. The results of this study indicated that NCAA athletes,
regardless of division, do, in fact, possess a high fear of reinjury. Although the factor
regarding fear of reinjury was not found to be directly related to a return to pre-injury
levels of activity in this study. improvements in rehabilitation processes and
implementation of different psychological strategies by orthopedic surgeons and sports
medicine professionals may help to decrease or eliminate the fear of reinjury in those
athletes that are being treated for injuries to the ACL. | en_US |
