Current Info on ACL tear...

5 days post op. This sucks! Pain is getting better. The dr just repaired the meniscus, scraped some bone from the patella (i think) and elongated the tendon. I think he did some other stuff but was way to foggy after surgery to remember. Good thing my wife was there. I have my follow up tomorrow. Got back to doing some pull ups and abs today with straight leg raises for my knee.

One thing I am noticing is that it is hard for me to talk even this many days out. Something I have to ask the doc about tomorrow. My voice feels like I'm back in bootcamp yelling everyday. Not sick either. Anyone else experience this before as I have not.

At 42 my orthopedist talked me into hamstring over cadaver based on my mountaineering activity. The recovery was probably 6 weeks longer. I'm now 5 years post surgery and my injured knee is now stronger than my uninjured one. At the time it was a hard tradeoff between wanting to recover faster and waiting to be stronger.

Gonna be honest - too lazy to read through all the previous responses but I do know of some relatively new procedures for ACL repair - namely instead of Hamstring or Patellar tendon grafting they are using fibers from the quadriceps. I'm a DPT and have seen lots of ACL repairs and talked with several ortho surgeons and the better ones are looking past the patellar tendon and H/S graphs and are seeing better results, less post-op pain and less residual deficits from the donor site. Now if you're doing allograft then all the useful information has probably been covered above. Just make sure you actually complete PT after surgery and make sure there's a big focus on proprioception and dynamic stability before you consider "taking care of the rest" on your own - a lot of re-ruptures from non complicated surgeries come from patients who think they're "healed" just because they have significantly reduced pain and almost full ROM.

Ted Eliason wrote:At the time it was a hard tradeoff between wanting to recover faster and waiting to be stronger.

mailforwil wrote:Gonna be honest - too lazy to read through all the previous responses but I do know of some relatively new procedures for ACL repair - namely instead of Hamstring or Patellar tendon grafting they are using fibers from the quadriceps. I'm a DPT and have seen lots of ACL repairs and talked with several ortho surgeons and the better ones are looking past the patellar tendon and H/S graphs and are seeing better results, less post-op pain and less residual deficits from the donor site. Now if you're doing allograft then all the useful information has probably been covered above. Just make sure you actually complete PT after surgery and make sure there's a big focus on proprioception and dynamic stability before you consider "taking care of the rest" on your own - a lot of re-ruptures from non complicated surgeries come from patients who think they're "healed" just because they have significantly reduced pain and almost full ROM.

I'm not super versed in stem cell therapy, but I have attended a couple of symposiums with people a lot smarter than I am with research, but there are a lot of ongoing studies - that being said most of it is really inconclusive and stem cells aren't "smart" - they don't just know what to grow into based upon their location. Just placing stem cells in the area won't necessarily "create" an ACL - it may help regenerate a partially torn ligament but that would require really specific therapy as well to induce the proper stresses to cause specialization of the stem cells - which you can't really guarantee then. There is a lot of work done with spinal cord injuries and stem cell therapy but unfortunately a lot of that results in regrowth of specialized tissues that aren't functional - as in they look like the thing you're trying to regrow but they don't act like it and don't function in the same way (i.e. don't conduct nerve impulses or respond to tensions and stress loading appropriately). Again - I'm not an expert in this and most of my info with stem cells and rehab is closer to SCIs but the same logic should apply.

Short answer - it's prob not going to work and would take a long time to rehab and even then might not create the type of tissues you need in the area.