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The Landing Error Scoring System (LESS) Is a Valid and Reliable Clinical Assessment Tool of Jump-Landing Biomechanics The JUMP-ACL Study

Background Anterior cruciate ligament injuries are common in athletes and have serious sequelae. A valid clinical tool that reliably identifies individuals at an increased risk for ACL injury would be highly useful for screening sports teams, because individuals identified as “high-risk” could then be provided with intensive prevention programs.

Hypothesis A clinical screening tool (the Landing Error Scoring System, or LESS) will reliably identify subjects with potentially high-risk biomechanics.

Study Design Cohort study (Diagnosis); Level of evidence, 2.

Methods A jump-landing-rebound task was used. Off-the-shelf camcorders recorded frontal and sagittal plane views of the subject performing the task. The LESS was scored from replay of this video. Three-dimensional lower extremity kinematics and kinetics were also collected and used as the gold standard against which the validity of the LESS was assessed. Three trials of the jump-landing task were collected for 2691 subjects. Kinematic and kinetic measures were compared across LESS score quartiles using 1-way analysis of variance; LESS quartiles were compared across genders using the chi-square test. The LESS scores from a subset of 50 subjects were rescored to determine intrarater and interrater reliability.

Results Subjects with high LESS scores (poor jump-landing technique) displayed significantly different lower extremity kinematics and kinetics compared with subjects with low LESS scores (excellent jump-landing technique). Women had higher (worse) LESS scores than men. Intrarater and interrater reliability of the LESS ranged from good to excellent.

Conclusion The LESS is a valid and reliable tool for identifying potentially high-risk movement patterns during a jump-landing task.

  1. Darin A. Padua, PhD, ATC, †‡*,
  2. Stephen W. Marshall, PhD†§,
  3. Michelle C. Boling, PhD, ATC||,
  4. Charles A. Thigpen, PhD, ATC||,
  5. William E. Garrett, Jr, MD, PhD and
  6. Anthony I. Beutler, MD#

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 8:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments? Email us, or you can trackback from your own site.