Cold Water Immersion Does Not Reduce Knee Joint Position Sense in Healthy Participants: a Randomised Cross-over Trial

Overview

The aim of this project is to assess the effect of cold water immersion on knee joint re-positional sense in healthy subjects. Cryotherapy, in the form of cold water immersion, had previously been shown to improve athletic performance however, debate exists within the existing literature regarding whether proprioception, in the form or joint position sense, is effected post treatment. Null hypothesis (H0): Water immersion has no effect on joint position sense (JPS). Alternate hypothesis (H1): Water immersion has an effect on joint position sense.

This was a prospective, randomised, cross-over design where volunteers acted as their own controls. The volunteers were immersed at two temperatures (detailed below) and these sessions were separated by six to ten days. The order of the testing was randomly assigned using a random number generator. Ethical approval of the design of this trial was gained from the University of Limerick's Research Ethics Committee and signed informed consent was gained from each participant before any data collection took place.

Conditions

Interventions