If you think you have injured your ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) you will have to make some decision about your treatment.
However, before you make those decisions we are assuming you’ve already been diagnosed with a torn ACL or you wouldn’t be reading this document.
It is a definite statement that everybody’s injury won’t be the same and therefore the treatment that you get may be different from that your neighbor, best friend, relative or other associate you have talked with about your possible treatments received for their injury.
The decisions you are presented with will be based on three factors – your doctor should discuss all of them with you before coming to any conclusive decisions. They are:
How you were actually injured and the nature of the injury;
If your lifestyle is affected, how is that; and
The activities you are involved with and how the injury is affecting them.
You won’t have to make all the decisions by yourself or without getting any input about the best way to treat your injury. You will have family involved but your primary partner in this process is your Doctor. There will be options and tradeoffs should be presented and considered thoroughly. Looking intensely at our lifestyle and what your priorities are will help you decide what’s important to you.
The range of treatments will be generally from physical therapy to ACL surgery.
We will try to be as complete as possible in presenting this information to help you make an informed decision but your Doctor is the best source for assisting you in making decisions and implementing them. This material is intended for your education and helping to make you a more informed consumer. You should also be able to consider some realities that are operating in your situation.
Usually the injury (your torn ACL) is sports related and it is the most common of the knee injuries sustained in sports activities. The stats are interesting – in the US alone between 100,000 and 200,000 people (or about 1 out of 3,000) get a ruptured or torn ACL.
The injury to your ACL usually happens when it is stretched beyond the usual range of flexibility to which it is accustomed. Although a sport is usually involved, the injury doesn’t always happen because of the physical contact of players. You shouldn’t expect the ligament (ACL) to heal by itself – it will remain loose after it tears.
It may be surprising but women get ACL injuries more than men – there are suspected reasons but some assumptions are about basic differences in anatomy, hormones, strength or conditioning.
Sometimes the injury can be attributed to sports where the players wear cleats and there is assertive cutting or pivoting in the playing of the sport.
There’s a lot of technical information about the anatomy of the knee and an analysis of the details of the injury may be done with Xrays, MRI or other imaging techniques so that your Doctor can present more information for your decision making process.
There are two specific tests on the knee that a Doctor will run that you should learn more about or ask – they are the Lachman’s and Pivot shift tests.
Good luck with your treatment or that of your loved one.
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