ACL Tear: Anterior Cruciate Trauma

ACL Tear The ACL also known as the anterior cruciate ligament is one of the four major ligaments in the knee that allows stability (about.com). ACL tears are most common in athletes and especially in female athletes. There are many ways to tear your ACL, whether it is with contact or no contact. There are also minimal symptoms for an ACL tear but they are very important to look for when an athlete is complaining about knee pain. The treatments for this injury also depend on the severity of the tear. The severity could determine if surgery is needed. These are all important things to know when you are in a situation with a person that has torn their ACL. Tearing your ACL can come at the snap of a finger, and that is what makes it scary for
If the athlete looks like they have a enough stability then they will just be able to rehabilitate it back to full strength and also it may indicate that the ligament is not fully torn. Unfortunately, if they do not show these signs then the surgeon is going to let them know that surgery is going to be the best option. But there are things that they are going to want the athlete to do before they are ready for surgery. The surgeon is going to want them to reduce the swelling, get their range of motion back, and be able to walk normally, if they do these it helps when it comes to start the rehabilitation process after the surgery. There are two different kinds of surgery that they are able to perform. For an ACL reconstruction the most common surgeons use either the patella graft or the hamstring graft. The patella graft uses the middle third of the person’s own patella tendon and is referred to as a bone-tendon-bone or BTB graft. The surgeon will make two small incisions for the arthroscopic tools are placed on either side of the tendon. Then a two inch cut is made over the patellar tendon on the front of the knee, the middle of the tendon is carefully removed; next, two tunnels are drilled into the bones on both sides of the joint where the ACL attaches to the bone. Lastly, the graft is then passed into the joint and placed into the same position of the original ACL and then it is secured with special headless screws. An advantage of this surgery is that the tendon replacing the ACL is as strong as or even stronger than the original. A disadvantage is that there may be a little discomfort at the front of the knee where they took the graft from but it usually goes away within a year. The other form of graft that they could do is a hamstring graft. This procedure uses the person’s own hamstring tendon from the same leg as the