Footballer’s knee . . . and other stories

Occupational hazards of professional footballers

The prevalence of knee pain and radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis is two to three times higher among retired professional footballers than in the male population generally, according to a survey in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (Br J Sport Med doi:10.1136/bjsports-2017-097503). Footballers were also more likely to have had a total knee replacement. These differences persisted after adjusting for a history of knee injury, which might suggest that repeated episodes of minor trauma end up being more destructive than a single severe event. Perhaps the surprising thing is that the excess of knee symptoms found in footballers …