Put a hold on the knife and head to the gym for some serious physical therapy. That’s the message for amateur athletes with tears in their anterior cruciate ligament, better known as the ACL. The opinion stems from research conducted at Lund University in Sweden, where doctors looked at 121 people aged 18 to 35, none of whom were professional athletes. Reuters reports that about half of the study group had undergone surgery for a torn ALC; the others
were given rehabilitation in hopes of delaying the operation.
Twenty-three of the 59 patients in the rehabilitation group eventually
ended up having the operation, but after
two years, those assigned to the surgery group were doing no better
than those who got physical therapy.
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Those in the non-surgery group: did they ever inline or ice skate again? Did they ever again know the joy of water or snow skiing?
It’s very simple: No ACL – no fun. Know ACL – know fun.
Blew my ACL March 2008 had surgery in May 2008(hamstring graph) blew same knee out again Feb 2009, I would not recommend soccer or any sport that changing directions with a foot plant, but if you work on strengthening your hamstrings and quads it will stabilize, I know at some point it will need to be fixed but right now is not the time. I ski both water and snow, race Mt bikes and motorcycles just need some decent knee braces for protection.
This is a difficult and often complex issue. Several things concern me about any conclusions drawn from this study. The results are based to a great degree on subjective opinions (there is more at issue than perception of pain). We have no information on the activity level of the participants – only that they were “amateurs”. As Carl points out, a couch potato might be fine without surgery, but is there a level of activity at which surgical repair has a better outcome? Cruciate injuries are often accompanied by other damage – to the collaterals, the meniscus. If the damage includes one or more of these structures, how does that affect the choice to have surgery or not?
Two years is a long time for a study, but its not a long time in a persons life. Five or ten years later, how much arthritis does the rehab knee have vs. the surgical knee? Which surgical techniques were evaluated? Remember – virtually every professional athlete who tears their cruciate gets it surgically repaired.
Exactly! If you can’t do what you love, where’s the benefit? Statistics don’t take that into consideration.
Teenage females are much more susceptible to suffering
ACL injuries than teenage males. Soccer play is the big
culprit. Once injured, these girls should consider less
traumatising sports like swimming, walking, bicycling,
chess, volunteering, assisting the elderly, etc. These
girls who have suffered ACL injuries can look forward to knee arthritis by the age of 35 unfortunately. Dave
Interesting article with some insightful responses however, it is 30 plus years too late for both knees! And now we’re talking new metal knees…maybe as I can still walk and the limitations of replacements would hamper the quality of life and Aikido…