Warm-up can prevent ACL injuries in military cadets

Anthony Beutler, MD, Associate Professor at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, MD, presented, "Can a 10-minute injury prevention program decrease injuries in military cadets? A JUMP-ACL study" today at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine in San Diego, CA
The conference, with more than 1,400 sports medicine physicians from across the United States and 10 countries around the world featured presentations on advances in sports medicine. Dr. Beutler presented on the controversial topic of ACL injury prevention.

Dr. Beutler, who serves as the Director of USU's Injury Prevention Research Laboratory, investigated whether a specialized warm-up performed by freshman cadets in basic training at the US Military Academy would prevent anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries, a major problem for the US military. Once a cadet has injured his or her ACL, recovery typically takes 6-12 months, requiring a substantial amount of time away from military training. A multitude of programs have been developed to reduce ACL injury rates, with variable success rates noted in medical literature. Dr. Beutler's intervention was a dynamic integrated movement enhancement (DIME) program, which aimed to improve neuromuscular control in activities involving jumping, landing, cutting and pivoting.

The cadets were randomized to participate either in the DIME warm-up or a more traditional active warm-up. The DIME cadets were further randomized into a "supervised" group (with close monitoring by physical therapists or athletic trainers) and"unsupervised" group. Dr. Beutler's study team found that there were fewer ACL injuries across the total study period in athletes in the supervised DIME group compared to those participating in the traditional active warm-up, and that cadets in the unsupervised DIME group had a paradoxical increase in ACL injuries. He concluded that the supervised DIME program was effective in reducing ACL injury risk among freshman cadets, but was relatively costly in comparison to a modest injury reduction risk.

Dr. Beutler says, "Insert quote here…something like, this is a super-fascinating area of research I hope to spend the rest of my career on….much more needs to be done to save all athletes from these terrible injuries….our military research will guide injury prevention in the athletic community as a whole…"

Source: University in Bethesda