No damage of joint cartilage of the lower limbs in an ultra-endurance athlete – an MRI-study The general opinion is the excessive endurance charges in training and competition lead to cartilage damage of the joints of the loaded extremity. Data resp.Pictures to joints from athletes in the area of extreme duration are not available. On the basis of a falling report at an endurance athletes, we have examined the joints of the lower extremity (ankle joint, knee joint and hip joint) with conventional and microscopic MRI.The athlete in the last 18 years in training and competition per year back 25,000 radikilometers, 4,000 running kilometers as well as around 270 swimming kilometers. The MRI images were evaluated by three different radiologists with respect to the thickness of the cartilage and examined by a fourth radiologist with respect to the quality of the cartilage.
The radiologists came to the end that the cartilage was absolutely undamaged in all examined joints. All details and pictures of the joints can be found under https://bmcmusculoskeletdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2474-14-343