Seminar: Anterior cruciate ligament injury – current knowledge and future perspectives

Seminar held at Hlíðarendi, Valur Football Club, Friday September 6th, 2024, from 9am to 4pm.

An anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is one of the more devastating injuries an athlete sustains. It is most common among young athletes (age 15-25) and a large portion of them will go on to have repeated ACL injuries. The impact on their knee health is often described by the fact that these young individuals will have old knees early in life. Direct and indirect cost to society is immense (surgery, medication, lengthy rehabilitation periods, absence from school/work etc.), not least in the long run (due to post-traumatic osteoarthritis and secondary comorbidities).

For over a decade the University of Iceland has led research relating to ACL injuries. Two project grants from the Icelandic research center have supported this research and results have been published and presented at conferences internationally as well as locally. In the past, however, few opportunities have been taken to speak more broadly to local coaches, healthcare workers and athletes.  

Research has in recent years not only focused on the scale, seriousness, and consequence of ACL injury, but also on potential modifiable risk factors that might be affected by training to reduce the risk of injury. The potential gains of reducing incidence of ACL injury is substantial, not least considering the impact on osteoarthritis and public health in general. We have invited international and local specialists to join us for a seminar on September 6th 2024. The aim is to discuss ways to utilize current knowledge to reduce the incidence of serious knee injury and thereby have a positive impact on knee health of athletes.

Guest registration here (opens in a new window)

Seminar Program

• 8:45-9:15 Meet and greet (coffee).
  9:15-9:20 Welcome words and short Introduction (Þórarinn Sveinsson)
  9:20-10:20 ACL rupture – who gets injured, what’s the problem and how do we manage?
  Jesper Bencke, Mette Kreutzfeldt Zebis, Kristín Briem.
• 10:20-10:50 Coffee break
• 10:50-11:50 Mechanism and risk of ACL injury – what happens, when, and why?
  Haraldur Björn Sigurðsson, Jesper Bencke, Tron Krosshaug.
• 11:50-12:45 Lunch
  12:45-12:55 Recap/summary of the morning’s talks (Þórarinn Sveinsson)
• 12:55-14:00 Risk Factors and ACL injury prevention – can we turn the tide and how?
  Kristín Briem, Haraldur Björn Sigurðsson, Mette Kreutzfeldt Zebis.
• 14:00-14:30 Coffee break
• 14:30-16:00 Workshops – choice and modification of exercises for specific effects.
  • 14:30-15:15 Prevention part 1 – understanding exercise biomechanics. Tron Krosshaug
  • 15:15-16:00 Prevention part 2 – understanding how to target muscles. Mette Kreutzfeldt Zebis and Jesper Bencke

About the Speakers

Mette Kreutzfeldt Zebis is the Head of Research and Development at the Department of Midwifery, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Psychomotor Therapy, and an Affiliate Professor at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen. She is also affiliated with the International Olympic Committee research centre in Copenhagen. Zebis holds a master’s degree in Exercise Physiology and a PhD in Human Physiology from the University of Copenhagen. Her research has focused on the prevention and rehabilitation of sports-related injuries by combining 1) large-scale prospective cohort studies to identify risk factors, 2) biomechanical studies to document specificity of protective approaches, and 3) randomized controlled trials to test the effectiveness of the approaches developed in the two first phases. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5301-3241

Jesper Bencke is manager of the Human Movement Analysis Laboratory at Copenhagen University Hospital, Amager-Hvidovre, Denmark, which is also a part of the department of Orthopaedic surgery and affiliated with International Olympic Committee research centre - Copenhagen. He holds a master’s degree in Exercise Science and Biomechanics and a PhD in Human Physiology from the University of Copenhagen. Bencke has more than 15 years of clinical experience in gait analysis of patients with neurological and/or orthopaedic disorders. His research during the past 30 years has focused on analysing athletic movements and identifying risk factors for ACL injuries, studying effects of intervention programs, and investigating potentially prophylactic exercises for optimisation of injury prevention programs. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5959-6994

Tron Krosshaug is a professor at the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center and the Department of Sports Medicine at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. His main research area is sports injury prevention, with a primary focus on serious knee injuries. His PhD work towards developing a novel method for extracting 3D joint kinematics from videos of real injury situations is internationally recognized. Krosshaug has utilized 3D movement analysis in experimental biomechanical studies as well as in large prospective cohort studies, to increase our understanding of ACL injury etiology. His company, Muscle Animations, aims to be world leading in 3D visualization and dissemination of evidence-based strength training biomechanics, exercise technique and muscle-skeletal loading. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9223-3386

Kristín Briem is a professor at the Department of physical therapy at the University of Iceland. She holds a master’s degree in orthopaedic physical therapy from the University of St.Augustine and a PhD in human movement sciences from the University of Delaware. Her research has primarily focused on understanding the scale and impact of ACL injury and reconstruction, while using 3D biomechanical analysis to study modifiable ACL injury risk factors with the aim of identifying avenues of prevention. Other areas of research involve head and neck trauma, and research and development of lower limb prostheses to improve function of lower limb amputees. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0606-991X

Haraldur Björn Sigurðsson is a physical therapist and an assistant professor at the University of Iceland department of Physical Therapy. His graduate work towards a MSc degree was in Sport Sciences at Lund University, with subsequent completion of his PhD at the University of Iceland in 2019. His doctoral work focused on ACL injury biomechanics and how motion capture data can be analyzed more specifically in relation to the ACL injury mechanism. His research still focuses on ACL injury risk factors, with the dream of eventually developing stronger preventative methods. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4936-0168

Þórarinn Sveinsson is a professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Iceland. He finished his Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Manitoba in Canada with emphasis on sensory- and electrophysiology. His research has covered a wide variety of subjects, like physical activity, fitness testing, fatigue, training distress and biomechanics of running. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8989-5514