Knee Joint Compression and Shear Forces in Healthy and Acl Deficient Copers and Non-copers during Walking

INTRODUCTION Different walking and movement patterns have been observed between anterior cruciate ligemant (ACL) deficient subjects that compensate well for their injury (copers) and those who do not (non-copers). Basically, previous studies observed that the movement pattern of copers was very similar to that of healthy subjects while the movement pattern observed in non-copers was different. In a previous study we observed that the walking pattern of non-copers was characterized by a significant reduction of the knee extensor moment during the stance phase but knee joint kinematics were identical to controls. In contrast, the copers walked with the same knee extensor momtent as the controls but had a greater peak knee flexion [1]. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how the different walking patterns observed between copers, non-copers and controls affected the compression and shear forces on the knee joint.