A sports scientist from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) has developed a Smartphone app which allows to measure ankle mobility (an important variable related to lower-limbs injury risk).
The range of motion of the ankle, or dorsiflexión, is one of the most used clinical evaluations to test lower-limbs injury risk in athletes. Several researches have demonstrated that reduced dorsiflexión angles are related with an increase of suffering injuries such as plantar fasciitis or anterior cruciate ligament tears.
To measure it, clinical equipment -goniometers- have been used to calculate the degrees of dorsiflexion of the athletes and patients. However, these devices might have an excessive cost and also, might not be available in many less resourceful centers.
A recent investigation published in the Journal of Sports Sciences analyzed the accuracy, validity and reliability of a novel iPhone app –Dorsiflex– which calculates ankle dorsiflexion by just using the phone, without the need of using additional equipment.
"To do so, we measured ankle dorsiflexion of many athletes with a professional goniometer and the app simultaneously. After that, we compared the results", tells us the creator and lead investigator of this study, Dr. Carlos Balsalobre-Fernández, sports scientist from the Department of Physical Education, Sport and Human Movement of the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
"One of the main findings of our study was that there was an almost perfect correlation between both devices when measuring dorsiflexion degrees, with an average error of just 0.5º", explains Balsalobre-Fernández.
Summarizing, this mobile app allows to evaluate lower-limbs injury risk in a simple, accurate and affordable way. This, according to the authors, might have a great practical application because it democratizes the use of this kind of measurements to every clinician and sports professional.
Reference:
Balsalobre-Fernández, C, et al. 2019. Concurrent validity and reliability of an iPhone app for the measurement of ankle dorsiflexion and inter-limb asymmetries. J Sports Sci. DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2018.1494908
