Are there any ACL Copers out here?

Yep, tufel is correct... Talk to a sport med doc in conjunction with your PT so that you get the correct balance of muscle training in your quads. They are called quads for a reason so make sure you are balancing all four in your work and not overworking one while letting another lag behind. I found that using a little biofeedback sensor set on my knees helped me retrain my exercise in PT, since while I was teaching fitness, I got a little lazy about concentrating on my own balanced muscle work. It's always better to avoid surgery if possible... anytime there's cut & stitch involved (lol) it lessens the integrity of the tissues. (Straight out of my orthopaedic surgeon's mouth)

canadjineh wrote: »

Yep, tufel is correct... Talk to a sport med doc in conjunction with your PT so that you get the correct balance of muscle training in your quads. They are called quads for a reason so make sure you are balancing all four in your work and not overworking one while letting another lag behind. I found that using a little biofeedback sensor set on my knees helped me retrain my exercise in PT, since while I was teaching fitness, I got a little lazy about concentrating on my own balanced muscle work. It's always better to avoid surgery if possible... anytime there's cut & stitch involved (lol) it lessens the integrity of the tissues. (Straight out of my orthopaedic surgeon's mouth)

Did your PT determine that you had a quadriceps deficiency that led to your tear? There are a few ways that one can tear an ACL but a quadriceps deficiency is usually more rare.

i lived with mine completely broken for a year and a half, and decided i couldnt deal with it. the unstability prevented me from doing anything besides walking in a straight line on level surfaces. There are different levels of ACL tears. mine was completely torn. sometimes they are only partial, and maybe you can strengthen your muscles to compensate. I could not. I'm very strong with massive quads and it didnt help at all. It took me about a year to rebuild the muscle i lost from atrophy from the original injury . I just had my ACL replaced in november, its an 8-12 month rehab. I went into it with huge quads, and came out with a spaghetti leg that will take me a year to rebuild back to size. I believe it was worth it, at 5 months post surgery, im' happy with the results, i still have many more months of rehab. I opted for a donor tendon because i didn't' want to lose any of my hamstring or patellar tendon. The donor tendon takes longer to heal.

I just saw this. You will probably not be a candidate for either a patellar graft or a hamstring graft. With us "older" folks, they usually give you a cadaver graft. We don't heal as well as kids. Taking an autograft needs more incisions and creates more damage that doesn't really heal as well for us.
Cadaver is not a problem. Supposedly, a cadaver graft gets a bit weaker than the autografts at some point during the healing, as what they put in gets weaker and your own tissue has not yet grown in and replaced it. I think that 'point' is about six months to one year. But people don't really reinjure a repaired knee. That is, people don't reinjure a repaired knee any more often than they injure their good knee, meaning that loss of strength really isn't that important. It doesn't leave your repaired knee more fragile.
Eventually, your own stem cells migrate into the graft and, over time, replace it with your own, living tissue. That is the thinking, anyways...

I have hyper mobility problems, so I've blown both of my ACLs and then re tore my hamstring graft. I have decided against another surgery (they can't repair the left because of the surgery I had to correct/fail to correct the patella alignment and stop the subluxation so I'm destined for bilateral knee replacements) so have really focused on my quads but what really helped was balance exercises. As soon as you have flexion and extension back, start standing on one leg - heel to toe, raising your good leg back, single leg squats, balance board. It's made all the difference to me. I run, bike, row, swim, all with minor problems that are easily overcome. Squats with weights are the only thing that I'm taking super slow.

Just don't cross your legs if you're prone to dislocations or you might get stuck!

My son did about 3 months of strengthening prior to left knee ACL replacement surgery. Surgeon said the stronger you are before surgery, the easier and more effective therapy will be after. The first thing the PT did was make sure spine, hips, knees, ankles were all in alignment. Everything had shifted to compensate for the knee pain while walking. His hips had shifted enough that his right foot was 2" lower than his left. Once aligned and all muscles were firing properly, he worked like a dog before surgery. ACL replacement was Dec 27 and he was pitching effectively by the end of March, with doctor's blessings. 10+ years since and he's been able to do anything and everything he has wanted to with no restrictions or limitations.

Getting to that point was an exasperating ordeal. All told, he had 3 knee surgeries in a 6 month period. First surgery was in June to "repair" a torn meniscus. After 2 months, knee felt worse than before surgery. Doc said the only thing left to do was " try a brace". What??? I never got a good feeling about this doc and looking back, I can see why. Trust your instincts!!!

Went to another doc to see if there really was nothing more that could be done. She looked at all the records and decided she needed to go in to see what was causing the pain because clearly, something was wrong. She was shocked at how bad the knee looked. The meniscus "repair" was ragged and there was all kinds of "stuff" floating around. She cleaned up what she could since she was already in there but was very concerned about how "amateurish" the meniscus repair appeared. She decided to refer us to another doc when she saw what looked like a torn ACL. Nothing had ever been mentioned about a torn ACL before that.

The 3rd doc confirmed a torn ACL and wanted to do surgery right away. Considering the fiasco this was turning in to, a friend recommended a 2nd opinion before proceeding with yet another (3rd now) surgery. That 4th doc confirmed the torn ACL and recommended ACL replacement. So, 4 docs and 6 months after the original injury, he had the 3rd surgery. In a short period of time, my son felt a real difference in how much more stable and pain free his knee felt.

On a side note, an interesting thing the 4th doc said was repeat ACL failures are almost always failures at the attachment. Either the attachment to the bone fails or the attachment holds and a small chunk of bone pulls off. Rarely does the actual tendon used as the replacement ligament snap.