Here’s today’s quick thought:
Don’t let shiny object syndrome prevent you from fulfilling your highest potential.
Shiny object syndrome is a state of distraction initiated by the ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing.
“The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.” – James Clear (Atomic Habits)
Find the beauty in the mundane.
How does youth knee injury affect quality of life for the next year?
Title: Youth with a sport-related knee injury exhibit significant and persistent knee-related quality of life deficits at 12-month follow-up compared to uninjured peers Authors: Christina Y. Le PT, PhD, et. al
What is it?
A longitudinal cohort study exploring how injury affects an adolescent’s knee-related quality of life (QOL) over a 1-year period.
The athletes in the study were 11-19 years old.
Why does it matter?
Getting injured when you’re an athlete is tough.
The toll in the acute phase is clear, but is there more than that?
Understanding the longer-term effects of a knee injury on an athlete’s quality of life can help us help them.
What did they find?
- Injured athletes had lower QOL scores at all time points, but the gap began to close over time.
- Increased strength was positively associated with increased QOL in injured athletes.
- Increased physical activity was positively associated with increased QOL at the 1-year follow-up.
What was the process?
- Injured athletes had to have an intra-articular knee injury in the previous 4 months. Injury was defined as:
- ligament, meniscus, or other intra-articular tibiofemoral or patellofemoral injury
- occurred while participating in a sport or recreational activity
- required medical consultation (e.g., physiotherapist, physician)
- and disrupted regular sports participation on at least one occasion.
- Athletes were assessed at baseline (≤4 months post-injury), 6-month, and 12-month follow-ups. They entered the study at the time of injury, not surgery.
- Outcomes included:
- Knee-related quality of life:
- measured via Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) QOL subscale
- Isokinetic knee extensor strength
- Physical activity:
- measured via accelerometer worn for 8 days
- Intermittent knee pain:
- measured via Intermittent and Constant Osteoarthritis Pain measure (ICOAP) intermittent pain subscale
- Fear of re-injury:
- measured via Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK)
- Knee-related quality of life:
My thoughts.
In the study, 56% of the patients had ACL ruptures. It’s entirely unsurprising that there were still lagging knee-related QOL metrics at the 1-year mark with the majority of the sample having ACL injuries.
However, there are some important bright spots in this study.
Getting stronger is correlated with improved QOL.
Staying active is correlated with improved QOL.
Those are both variables that we have a lot of individual control over.
Sure, we have the chicken or the egg debate. Does staying active improve QOL or does improved QOL help you stay more active? Or are they coincidentally correlated by some third party causal variable?
Regardless, we need to focus on controlling the controllables.
How can you use it?
- Get your injured athletes as strong as possible.
- Encourage your injured athletes to stay as active as possible.
Best,
Zach
Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS