Patetta M, Mayo B, Martini OZ, Sullivan B, Onsen L, Hutchinson M. Preseason elimination impact on anterior cruciate ligament injury in the National Football League. World J Orthop 2021; 12(11): 833-841 [PMID: 34888143 DOI: 10.5312/wjo.v12.i11.833]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Omar Zaki Martini, BSc, Research Fellow, Department of Orthopaedics, University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, 835 S. Wolcott Avenue E270 MSS MC 844, Chicago, IL 60612, United States. omarti29@uic.edu
Research Domain of This Article
Sport Sciences
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Cohort Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Orthop. Nov 18, 2021; 12(11): 833-841 Published online Nov 18, 2021. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v12.i11.833
Preseason elimination impact on anterior cruciate ligament injury in the National Football League
Michael Patetta, Benjamin Mayo, Omar Zaki Martini, Breanna Sullivan, Leonard Onsen, Mark Hutchinson
Michael Patetta, Benjamin Mayo, Omar Zaki Martini, Breanna Sullivan, Leonard Onsen, Mark Hutchinson, Department of Orthopaedics, University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, IL 60612, United States
Author contributions: All authors solely contributed to this paper.
Institutional review board statement: This study was exempt from institutional board review as it was conducted using publicly available information.
Informed consent statement: This study does not require informed consent statement.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors feature potential conflicts of interest nor have they received any sort of support to carry out this study.
Data sharing statement: No individual participant data was shared.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Omar Zaki Martini, BSc, Research Fellow, Department of Orthopaedics, University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, 835 S. Wolcott Avenue E270 MSS MC 844, Chicago, IL 60612, United States. omarti29@uic.edu
Received: June 6, 2021 Peer-review started: June 6, 2021 First decision: July 28, 2021 Revised: August 3, 2021 Accepted: September 15, 2021 Article in press: September 15, 2021 Published online: November 18, 2021
Core Tip
Core Tip: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic presented a unique disruption to preseason National Football League (NFL) football with the cancelation of all preseason games. This study compared the incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears through the first eight weeks of the NFL season in 2020 to the mean incidence over the previous 5 seasons and found that there was indeed an increase in ACL tears through the first four games of the 2020 season with no significant difference when accounting for the preseason. This suggests that there may be front-loading of injuries over the course of an NFL season. In summary, this study suggests that if preseason games are eliminated, players can expect similar rates of ACL tears overall when compared to conventional seasons, but with more ACL tears in the first four weeks of the regular season.
