Abstract
The return to sport after knee injury is challenging. This is burdensome for
sports with a high incidence of injuries, such as team handball. Various tests
guide decision making, but often the athlete’s preinjury performance of
these measures remains unknown. Moreover, objective return-to-sport criteria of
a matching population are missing. The purpose of this study was to evaluate
objective measures of knee capability in handball depending on players’
age. Two hundred sixty-one handball players performed a functional test battery
designed to evaluate knee capability after an anterior cruciate ligament injury:
two- and one-legged stability analysis, jumps, speed tests, and agility
assessments. For age-specific evaluation, athletes were divided into three age
groups (16–19; 20–29;≥30 years). Male players showed
differences in two and one-legged jumping height (p<0.02) as well as
power per body weight (p<0.01) between age groups. Young female players
reached better results in two-and one-legged stability. Besides the quick feet
test, results of females did not differ between age groups. Functional knee
stability in healthy handball players is partly influenced by age, and females
show better results in stability and male athletes in power measurements. This
aspect should be considered for return to sports testing and underlines the
importance of performance measures in athletic testing.
Key words
return to sport - handball - test battery - knee
