Question

Steve is a member of the West Coast Eagles football team. During practice, he suffered a high impact collided with a team-mate and injured the anterior compartment of his thigh. As a result of the collision, his quadriceps femoris muscle were compressed against the femur, resulting in quadriceps contusion or ‘cork thigh’

Explain what happens to the muscle compartment following such injuries

Answer 1

Quadriceps contusion or a cork thigh as it is commonly known, is the result of a severe impact to the thigh which consequently compresses against the hard surface of the femur (thigh bone). This often causes deep rupture to the muscle tissue and haemorrhage occurs, which is followed by inflammation.

The injury consists of a well-defined sequence of events involving microscopic rupture and damage to muscle cells, macroscopic defects in muscle bellies, infiltrative bleeding, and inflammation. The repair of the tissue can be thought of as a race between remodeling and scar formation.

Several physiological responses may occur after a deep thigh contusion including:

1.Broken blood vessels resulting in bleeding (hematoma) into the injured area

2.Crushed muscle tissue resulting in hip and knee dysfunction

If there is major untreated and/or unresolved bleeding deep in the muscle tissue, a serious condition known as myositis ossificans can occur.

Contusion injury can lead to either diffuse or circumscribed bleeding that displaces or compresses muscle fibres causing pain and loss of motion. It happens that muscle fibres are torn off by the impact, but typically muscle fibres are not torn by longitudinal distraction. Therefore, contusions are not necessarily accompanied by a structural damage of muscle tissue. For this reason athletes, even with more severe contusions, can often continue playing for a long time, whereas even a smaller indirect structural injury forces the player often to stop at once.