Objectives: Quantitative biomechanical tests, along with physical assessment, may be useful to understand kinematics associated with graft types in anterior cruciate ligament surgery, particularly in individuals aiming for a safe return to sport.
Methods: Sixty male soccer players in three groups participated in this study. Three equal groups of healthy, auto transplanted and allotransplanted participants, matched for age, gender, activity level and functional status, landed with one foot on a force plate. Their kinematic information was recorded by the motion analyzer and used to describe coordination the variability by measuring coupling angles using vector coding.
Results: The coordination variability of the allograft group in the surgical limb was significantly greater than that of the healthy group at least 9 months after the reconstructive surgery of the ACL and at the stage of return to sports, (F (6, 35) = 2.79, p = 0.025; Wilk's Λ = 0.676, partial η2 = 0.32). The coordination pattern in the surgical and healthy limbs of the surgical groups also differed from that of the healthy people, which was more pronounced in the allograft group, (F (6, 35) = 2.61, p = 0.034; Wilk's Λ = 0.690, partial η2 = 0.31).
Conclusion: These results show that the allograft group has a different coordination variability at return to sport than the healthy group, so they may need more time for excessive training and competition.
Keywords: Allograft; Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL); Autograft; Coordination variability.