2024 Volume 45 Pages 162-168
Patients following anterior cruciate ligament （ACL） reconstruction suffer from dysfunction of the quadriceps femoris muscle （QF） for a long period of time due to neurophysiological abnormalities called arthrogenic muscle inhibition （AMI）， preventing the patients from returning to sport. Failure to reduce AMI at early phases following injury or surgery could lead chronic muscular impairments due to supraspinal dysfunction. Recently, a systematic review reported the effect of cryotherapy as a treatment for AMI of QF. However, the effect of intervention using cryotherapy in early postoperative period for a certain period of time has not been investigated. In cryotherapy, exercise intervention is performed while exercise efficiency is temporarily higher by focal cooling of joints. In the present study, to examine the effect of cryotherapy intervention in early postoperative period on QF strength, cryotherapy was applied immediately before starting each rehabilitation session for 4 weeks at early phase following ACL reconstruction. The knee extension strength of patients who received cryotherapy tended to be higher than that of patients who did not receive cryotherapy. This result suggests that AMI of QF following ACL reconstruction could be treated at an early phase as hospitalization using cryotherapy.
