A study to evaluate the effect of fatigue on knee joint proprioception and balance in healthy individuals

Abstract

Balance and proprioceptive testing is more commonly used in clinical settings to evaluate injured athletes to return to activity. Muscle fatigue produces neuromuscular deficiency within the muscle, thus predispose a joint to injury and decrease the athletic performance. A finding of previous studies shows contradictory findings of effect of muscle fatigue on proprioception and balance.
Aims. A study to investigate the effect of fatigue on knee joint proprioception and balance in healthy individuals.
Material and Methods. An observational study was conducted on 30 healthy subjects (age 18-30 years) from Srinivas college of physiotherapy, Mangalore. Subjects was selected by simple random sampling techniques. Fatigue was induced in the subjects by cycling up to level of exceeding 60% of predicted maximal heart rate (HRmax). Subjects were tested to estimate reproduction error by using weight bearing joint position sense test at 300 of knee flexion, by goniometric evaluation accompanied by photographic method and the balance assessment was done on force platform with the measurement of anteroposterior (AP), lateral center of pressure (CoP) excursion and stability score in single limb stance, before and after fatigue protocol.
Results. After inducing fatigue, significant reproduction error was found for perception of joint position sense (t=4.103) with significant changes were found in AP (t=3.997), lat CoP excursion (t=10.949) and stability score (t=11.785) at p>0.05.
Conclusion. A study revealed that moderate exercises can reduce proprioception which affects the neuromuscular control of joint making individual more suspectible to injury.

Key words:

fatigue, proprioception, balance, dynamic stability

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