This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Anxiety levels, situational awareness among factors that predispose individuals to injury
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
 Charles Buz Swanik |
PHILADELPHIA — Certain neurocognitive deficits have been found to affect coordination, thereby making individuals more prone to unintentional injury, according to an investigator from the University of Delaware.
During a presentation at the National Athletic Trainers’ Association 2010 Annual Meeting & Clinical Symposia, Charles Buz Swanik, PhD, ATC, said that one of the problems facing athletic trainers and physicians is being able to safely test athletes and other individuals for loss of coordination. The way to do this is by creating a small sensory conflict while simultaneously measuring joint stability, which was found to decrease joint stiffness by 30% to 50% in a controlled laboratory setting.
Swanik told Orthopedics Today, “Of the orthopedists who I’ve talked to and from my experience, I think that we can probably do a better job screening some of our patients or screening athletes and trying to determine what approach to take with them that will be the best and that will give them the best outcome.”
Injury-prone
Swanik has found the main characteristics that make an individual prone to injury are high anxiety, deficits in processing speed or reaction time, and poor situational awareness.
“So as this relates to the athletic model, essentially, competition is built around doing things that are more complicated than the other team. … And if you can do this you win, but more than likely, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Swanik said.
The pressure to win
According to Swanik, participation in sports requires athletes to maintain situational awareness of a broad attentional field while continuously monitoring their environment, filtering irrelevant information, and simultaneously choosing and executing complex motor programs. Combined with the pressure to win, these requirements may translate to the neurocognitive deficits mentioned above, putting athletes at high risk of unintentional injury, such as non-contact anterior cruciate ligament injury or rolling over of the ankle.
“The main thing is that we’ve done a very good job of studying the biomechanics of these injuries and epidemiology, but it is brain function that is actually controlling the biomechanics, and we don’t know what is happening, what is disrupting the brain that is actually leading to the faulty mechanics,” Swanik said.
- Reference:
Swanik CB. Cognitive factors related to injury proneness. Presented at the National Athletic Trainers’ Association 2010 Annual Meeting & Clinical Symposia. June 22-25, 2010. Philadelphia, Pa.
Charles Buz Swanik, PhD, ATC, can be reached at the University of Delaware, Department of Health, Nutrition & Exercise Sciences, Biomechanics and Movement Sciences Program, 547 South College Ave, Newark, DE 19716; 302-831-2306; e-mail: scwanik@udel.edu.
Dr. Swanik highlighted the point that if you have neurocognitive deficits, it is going to make you more prone to injury. What I’m finding is that even after injury, there are still neurocognitive deficits that we need to address because these deficits are also influencing function postoperatively.
– Erin Hartigan, PT, DPT, OCS, ATC, PhD
Assistant Professor
Westbrook College of Health Professions
Department of Physical Therapy
University of New England
Portland,
Maine
