Do males and females sustain ACL injuries at the same rate, and from the same sports?
Several broad-based surveillance studies have looked at males and females in the same sports, and their results have varied as to the amount of difference in overall injury rate and risk. But it is generally the case that females have a higher incidence of ACL injury than males in sports played by both genders. Most studies put females’ ACL injury risk somewhere in the range of four to eight times that of males participating in the same or comparable activities. We have worked with our own athletic training team and colleagues to gather data and define reportable injuries at 15 high schools. In all, we looked at 5,500 athletes–an equal number of males and females–for a total of nearly 800,000 hours of athletic exposure. We found significant differences in most sports, but not all. Specifically, females had higher injury rates than males in soccer, basketball, track, cross country, and softball (as compared to baseball). There was no statistically significant difference in the injury
