Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center

Intoduction

Associate professor Tron Krosshaug underlined in his keynote lecture the need for a multi-diciplinary approach to find out how injuries happen.

In front of a near packed auditorium Krosshaug started his lecture by defining ”the mechanism of injury”.

According to Krosshaug, the mechanism of injury should be described in terms of;

1. Player/opponent behavior 

2. Playing situation

3. Gross biomechanics

4. Detailed biomechanics

He elegantly showed how each of these different descriptions can be used for forming preventive measures.

Different approaches

From previous works, Krosshaug and coworkers identified eight different research approaches to study injury mechanisms. Their advantages and limitations were discussed.

Krosshaug further underlined that even simple approaches can potentially provide important information that can be used to design preventive measures.

The need for a multi-dicipinary approach

For more complex injury scenarios, no single research approach alone is adequate in terms of validity, accuracy and completeness of the provided information.

During the lecture, Krosshaug several times pointed out the necessity of validating injury mechanism hypotheses by studying real injury situations.

It was shown how previously established truths could be falsified with data from injury situations.

Joint motion, joint effort

Krosshaug has previously developed a method that makes it possible to estimate the joint motion from videos of injury situations.

However, to get an even better understanding of complex injury scenarios such as hamstrings strains, ankle sprains or ACL ruptures, modeling and simulation was mentioned as a promising approach.

Intelligent protection

The importance of accurate biomechanical descriptions of the injury situation was also discussed.

So-called “intelligent protection” is a new field in sports injury prevention. One example can be self releasing airbag systems to protect the trunk or head.