Why are females more prone to ACL tears and why does it take females longer to recover?It is important to know Females are more prone to ACL tears so one can be aware of what can cause you to tear your ACL and how it can affect someone physically and mentally. Knowing this can also help you understand the process and how it happened if you or someone you know tears their ACL. An article titled “Anterior Cruciate Ligament Rupture: Differences Between Males and Females” written by Karen M. Sutton, MD an orthopedic surgeon says that female athletes are three times more likely to rupture their acl compared to male athletes. Hanuel Lee along with a couple others wrote an article in “The Tohoku Journal of Experimental Medicine” titled “A Greater Reduction of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Elasticity in Women Compared to amen as a Result of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness” uses evidence from an experiment that they conducted to talk about the difference between female and males ACL elasticity. Sai K. Devana has an article titled “Disparities in ACL Reconstruction: the Influence of Gender and Race on Incidence, Treatment, and Outcomes” explains in detail how the differences in a females ACL compared to a males ACL can cause females to be more prone to ACL rupture.
The probability of a female’s Anterior Cruciate ligament rupturing is three times more likely compared to a males. This is due to the fact that a female’s acl is built differently from a males. In an abstract written by Karen Sutton MD, she says “Intrinsic factors such as increased quadriceps angle and increased posterior tibial slope may predispose girls and women injury.” (Sutton) Karen Sutton is an board certified sports medicine surgeon meaning who has expertise in the knee and other areas. She also says that females have a smaller Notch width index and a smaller acl cross sectional area compared to males. As she also said females have an increased quadriceps angle which can make them prone to disorders and injuries. The average Q angle for a male is 14o and a female is 17 o. Making females much more prone to getting injured because having a higher angle for your quadriceps angle leads to a more laterally directed pull on the quadriceps which may result in the ACL having a higher risk for injury.
When females land “in a more erect posture with an external rotation position.”(Devana) it could put more stress on our ACL, landing incorrectly on your knee can lead to acl rupture extremely easily. Females also have a “higher quadriceps-to-hamstring mass ratio and a higher ratio of quadriceps-to-hamstring recruitment” (Devana). Having a higher quadriceps to hamstring ratio can put you at more risk of injury because it would decrease your knee stability especially when playing sports when you are changing directions often and putting a lot of pressure on your knee. If your knee is not stable it can rupture your acl or cause you to have knee problems. Females also take longer to return to their sports compared to guys due to the psychological difficulties and the fact that it takes them longer to recover. “male patients have been shown to have greater psychological readiness to RTS throughout the entire rehabilitation process compared to females” (Devana). It takes females longer to return because during the rehabilitation process they take longer to process the entire situation and tearing your ACL takes a huge toll on a person mentally.
The author uses ethos to back up their claim that females take longer to recover from intense workouts and ACL injuries because the ACL elasticity is greater than males by conducting an experiment. In the article they say “Women’s ACL elasticity and muscle strength are influenced by their reproductive hormones and there are differences in DOMS between men and women” (Lee). DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness which is basically when you workout and the next day or so your muscles are sore. After females workout their acl elasticity goes down and so does their muscle strength due to DOMS. This simply means that women take more damage to their musculoskeletal structure after an intense workout compared to men meaning females need longer to recover. “The reason might be the hormones, and they play an important role in regulating muscle mass, which may contribute to slower recovery times in women.” (Lee). They conducted an experiment with both males and females and found that females recover slower and lose strength faster and it may be due to our hormone differences. Meaning females can take longer than men to recover from ACL reconstruction due to their hormones. Since ACL surgery has multiple different grafts that could be used for their reconstruction surgery, one of the options is your quad muscle, they take it and use it to help rebuild your acl. But since your muscle gets taken it means you have to slowly recover your strength and muscle from your quad which can take longer for females since our hormones play a role in regulating muscle mass.
Females are more prone to rupturing their ACLs and taking longer to recover. The authors all use some sort of ethos to make them seem trustworthy in their articles. They also used experiment results to give actual facts. They explained that females have smaller acl cross sections compared to males and their Quadriceps angle is higher than males which can make them more prone to injuries. Females land differently and it can make them more prone to injuries on their knees as well. They used cause and effect to explain how if they land a certain way it can cause stress on the knee. Overall females just have different proportions with their muscles that can make them more prone to injuries.
I like how you started your hook with a question to hook your readers. Also, how you introduce your articles and give a little information about it. However, you should add your thesis statement to it and state what 3 rhetorical devices they both use. I saw that for one of your paragraphs, you included a rhetorical device (ethos) but should include another two. For your other 2 body paragraphs, you should add a topic sentence explaining one of the rhetorical devices you have chosen or both shared in common. Also, I think that you should connect your evidence to your topic sentence and explain how they use it.
You did a great job exploring an ACL injury in depth but there was no thesis statement in the introduction, making the essay fragmented since the reader has no clue on what you’re going to dive into in the following paragraphs. I may be wrong, but I think you have to write about something else (ex: cause & effect, structure, etc) on top of one rhetorical appeal of your choice. It seems like you are providing a more in depth context of the two sources in the second and third paragraph, you could probably integrate some of that into the statements being made in the thesis.