Brief Reports

Role of Prophylactic Knee and Ankle Bracing in Injury Reduction

Knee and ankle injuries continue to be ever present at all levels of athletic participation. A relatively recent approach in injury intervention is the use of prophylactic knee braces (PKB) and ankle stabilizers (AS). Prophylactic braces are used to reduce the frequency and severity of injuries in a cost effective manner, but their clinical efficacy has been questioned. Specific to PKB, there is little agreement among the results of studies completed to date as to their effectiveness in reducing the incidence of knee injuries. This is attributed to a lack of control of confounding variables that mitigate the interpretive findings of many studies. Although the clinical research regarding AS is limited, it appears that they are effective in reducing the incidence of acute ankle injuries. Recommendations for future study as well as considerations for clinical research analysis are presented.