Abstract #2726

Longitudinal Analysis of Knee Articular Cartilage in Collegiate Basketball Players and Swimmers: Preliminary Results

Elka B Rubin¹, Valentina Mazzoli¹, Marianne Black¹, Arjun D Desai¹, Kate Young¹, Feliks Kogan¹, Ashwin Sreedhar¹, Dominic J Vincentini¹, Katelin A Knox¹, Tomoo Yamada¹, Andrew McCabe², Marc Safran¹, Sharmila Majumdar³, Hollis G Potter⁴, and Garry E Gold¹

¹Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States, ²Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, United States, ³University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, ⁴Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, NY, United States

Basketball players place high loads on their knee joints that can lead to chronic knee injuries. In this study, we used advanced MRI methods and a cluster analysis to longitudinally study cartilage structure and potential early degenerative changes in Division 1 (D1) basketball players and swimmers. Pre-season and post-season quantitative results indicate an increase in T₂ and T_1p relaxation times in the central compartment of the femoral cartilage in the basketball players compared to the swimmers. The results of this study suggest that microstructural changes in knee cartilage can occur in one season of D1 college play.

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