Abstract
When interpreting sex differences in the injury risk during sport activities, potential gender effects are often overlooked. This might actually be the case with regard to the higher injury risk of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in female skiers. A higher failure rate of ski binding releases has been suggested at least partly to explain the more frequent ACL injuries in female skiers. However, as males seem to be predominantly responsible for the development of standards for ski binding settings, one might speculate that they could rather make standards for males than females. If true, the inclusion of female engineers could actually represent an appropriate approach to reduce ACL injures in female recreational skiers.
Highlights
Female recreational alpine skiers have twice the knee injury prevalence of their male counterparts, and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk is three times greater in females.Sex Versus Gender Effects There is still an increasing necessity to entangle sex and gender in human health research when interpreting sex differences in the prevalence and incidence of various diseases and injuries [1]
Failure of binding release at the moment of a ski accident may contribute to the higher injury risk of the ACL in female skiers
Gender effects on various health- and disease-related issues have been highlighted in the literature, e.g., for cardiovascular diseases [3], for autism spectrum disorders [4] and for injuries of the ACL [2]
Summary
There is still a need to distinguish clearly between sex and gender when interpreting sex differences in injury risk during sport activities. Failure of binding release at the moment of a ski accident may contribute to the higher injury risk of the ACL in female skiers. When males are predominantly responsible for the development of standards for ski binding settings, they might partly neglect actual needs for females
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