Female Athletes Are Half as Likely to Return to High-Risk Sports Compared With Male Athletes After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: An Exploration of Return-to-Sport Outcomes Between Sexes
Hana Marmura, Andrew Firth, Alan MJ Getgood, STABILITY Study Group, Dianne M Bryant · 2026
Read Female Athletes Are Half as Likely to Return to High-Risk Sports Compared With Male Athletes After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: An Exploration of Return-to-Sport Outcomes Between Sexes by Hana Marmura, Andrew Firth, Alan MJ Getgood, STABILITY Study Group, Dianne M Bryant (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13661816.txt.
Description
Hana Marmura and co-authors report in 2026 a stark sex gap in athletes returning to risky sports after knee ligament surgery. Tearing the anterior cruciate ligament ends seasons, and rebuilding it does not guarantee a comeback. How return rates split by sex in jumping, pivoting, and cutting sports was poorly mapped.
The study reuses data from a randomized trial of five hundred such athletes, testing two surgical variants. Return was counted three ways: any sport at all, any high risk sport, and the athlete's own sport at their old level. Most patients got back to some sport, and about three quarters reached a high risk one. Fewer than half regained their preinjury level. Men returned at higher rates on every count, with female athletes at roughly half the male likelihood of high risk return. The authors probe which factors predict return, hunting levers to close the gap.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Hana Marmura, Andrew Firth, Alan MJ Getgood, STABILITY Study Group, Dianne M Bryant |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 47 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |