ACL-CARE Consortium

Clinically Assessed Risk Factors for a Second ACL Injury Using an Innovative Wearable Sensor

The ACL Clinically Assessed Re-injury Evaluation (ACL-CARE) Consortium is a collaborative research effort between Virginia Tech (VT), the University of North Carolina (UNC), High Point University, Wake Forest University, OrthoVirginia, and Carilion Clinic with the goal of improving recovery and reduce re-injury risk for athletes after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.

Each year, thousands of young athletes experience an ACL tear. About 1 in 60 adolescent athletes will suffer an ACL injury, and nearly 90% undergo surgery and months of rehabilitation. While many return to sport, research shows they face a 15 times higher risk of re-injury, either to the repaired ligament or the other knee.

Funded Research Projects

Clinically Assessed Risk Factors for a Second ACL Injury Using an Innovative Wearable Sensor (R01 AR078811)

This project aims to bridge the gap between research and real-world practice. Using load-sensing insoles and simple clinic-based assessments to measure movement symmetry and identify athletes at higher risk for re-injury. By combining these innovative measures with traditional clinical and psychological assessments, we will build a prognostic model to help clinicians make evidence-based decisions about when athletes can return to sport safely.

Building on this work, we have received funding for two additional studies:

• Predicting second injuries after primary ACL reconstruction using clinically accessible videography (Ancillary Project (R01AR083709)): Using markerless videography, we capture jump-landing and hopping movements to calculate ankle, knee, and hip joint kinematics using an open-source motion capture platform.

• Clinically Assessed Risk Factors for a Second ACL Injury Using an Innovative Wearable Sensor (Supplement (R01AR078811)): Expanding the study to include an additional 200 uninjured athletes to serve as a comparison group for the ACL-injured participants.

We are enrolling over 350 ACL-reconstructed athletes (ages 12–30) across two main goals of the study and tracking them for 18 months after returning to sport. The ultimate goal of this work is to reduce the number of second ACL injuries through better assessment tools and more targeted rehabilitation strategies

Meet the Team

Principle Investigators

Study Team

Virginia Tech

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

High Point University

Wake Forest University

Participating Physicians