Objectifying The Return To Sport Decision Using Technology

There are >250,000 ACL injuries in the US every year resulting in ~$5B health care cost (AAOSM Annual Conference 2016).  With only 63% returning to sport (Webster et al Am J Sport Med 2019) and 1 in 4 youths reinjuring upon return to sport “RTSport” (Wiggins et al Am J Sports Med 2016), having some form of objective measure to make informed RTSport decisions should be a priority for sports medicine clinicians and strength and conditioning specialists.  Currently, there is no standard on how RTSport decisions are made, despite the literature guides us on what functional testing we should be using (Melick et al Br J Sports Med 16, Toole et al J Ortho Sport Phy Ther 2017), core testing (DeBlaiser et al Am J Sport Med 2019) and psychological testing we should use (Paterno et al Sport Health 2018) to make these decisions.

By leveraging wearable sensor technology to assess movements known to put athletes at risk as well as biomechanical factors during field testing, this can provide clinicians and strength coaches with objective data to make more informed RTSport decisions and guide RTSport training.  In this presentation, Dr. Nessler will cover the latest research related to biomechanical risk factors associated with ACL injuries, what research indicates should be used in determining RTSport and how technology can be leveraged to provide clinicians with objective reliable and valid information to make more informed clinical decisions.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the current research on ACL injuries.
• Understand the impact of kinesiophobia on movement and injury risk.
• Review latest research on functional testing for RTSport.
• Demonstrate how accurately and efficiently wearable sensor technology provides objective measures of movement and on the field performance.
• Review what mass data sets and trends have taught us.
• Discuss how this data can be used to provide more informed decisions for RTSport.

Webinar Replay

Course Instructor

Trent Nessler, DPT

Trent Nessler, PT, MPT, DPT is owner of The Athlete Laband co-founder | developer of the ViMove+ AMI. A sports medicine physical therapist with 25 years’ experience, he has worked with professional athletes, first responders and military personnel his entire professional career. Dr. Nessler is an author, published researcher and internationally recognized expert in injury prevention. In partnership with DrosaVi, Dr. Nessler co-founded | developed the ViMove+ AMI.  This assessment leverages wearable sensor technology to capture 3D movement to capture 3500 data points with lab quality on how a subject moves. The ViMove+ AMI has been used in the NFL, NBA, NHL, US Military and in first responders to assess movement on >90,000 tactical and sport athletes in 5 countries. The mass data sets collected has created the largest database related to human movement and is being used in several national and prestigious research projects. Data, knowledge and programming from this system is being used to prevent injuries in sport and tactical athletes across the globe.  Dr. Nessler is a published researcher on injury prevention in peer reviewed journals and author of a 350 page textbook "How To Build A Badass Firefighter". Dr. Nessler has developed several nationally recognized injury prevention products and programs including ACL Play It Safe, Run Safe and ACL Safe and Strong. He is also a nationally recognized speaker presenting over at 30+ conferences and continuing medical education courses a year on the topic of injury prevention. Dr. Nessler is also an accomplished Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt, specializes in treating the combat athlete and has launched several research projects on BJJ injuries and training in law enforcement.