ACL Rehab in NYC

When is it safe to return to sport if you have an ACL injury? We’ll talk about this next on the latest Back & Body video. Dr. Dave Perna here with Back & Body, your collaborative care approach for chiropractic, physical therapy, acupuncture, medical care offering our services to the patients of New York City in Midtown, East in New York City on 58th and Lexington. Also on US Route 22 in Springfield, New Jersey servicing the people of Union County including Summit, Springfield, Cranford, Westfield, Garwood and Scotch Plains. Today we’re looking at a study from the British Association of Sports and Exercise Medicine, it’s a different journal so I did have to look down. It is from Europe, but it does look at the return to sport or what they call “RTS” and the likelihood of time it would take a person and lower their likelihood of re-injury.

The biggest concern with an ACL injury is re-injury, so there was a study done in saying the likelihood of re-injury in return to sport. They found that if a person waited over 9 months that they reached the maximum reduction of risk of re-injuring the knee. So let me say it this way, for every month after surgery there was a 51% less chance you were to re-aggravate or re-injure your ACL for up to 9 months. After 9 months, there was no decrease in risk of injury. So the magic number is waiting 9 months. If you take anything out of this at all from this video, that is the most important thing. The other thing they found that reduced the likelihood of re-injury was comparing quadriceps strength from the injured knee to the uninjured knee. They found if there was less than a 10% difference in quadriceps strength between injured knee and uninjured knee that the return to sport had a less likelihood of an injury. So those were the two biggest things. There were several other factors that they looked at to determine return to sports.

New York City ACL Surgery Recovery

The biggest concern with an ACL injury is re-injury, so there was a study done in saying the likelihood of re-injury in return to sport. They found that if a person waited over 9 months that they reached the maximum reduction of risk of re-injuring the knee. So let me say it this way, for every month after surgery there was a 51% less chance you were to re-aggravate or re-injure your ACL for up to 9 months. After 9 months, there was no decrease in risk of injury. So the magic number is waiting 9 months. If you take anything out of this at all from this video, that is the most important thing. The other thing they found that reduced the likelihood of re-injury was comparing quadriceps strength from the injured knee to the uninjured knee. They found if there was less than a 10% difference in quadriceps strength between injured knee and uninjured knee that the return to sport had a less likelihood of an injury. So those were the two biggest things. There were several other factors that they looked at to determine return to sport, but they decided that those two were the most significant.

Their return to sport was for sports they called level 1 which included the following. Handball, football and this is soccer because it is European research journal, basketball and floorball which I’m not sure what that is. Basically the other sports they mention are a lot of turning at cutting, and remember ACL injuries are usually a non-contact injury of a person planting and trying to turn. So they considered that level 1 sport. They found that a lot of people who did not return to level 1 sport or return to sports in general which were not considered a level 1 variety had a less likelihood of re-injury as well. They also state that the reduction of injury of a person after 2 years post ACL reconstructive surgery had a very high likelihood of not re-injuring it and without the risk of re-injury, you reduce the risk of osteoarthritis to the knee over time. So this is important for people who have children who may get injured in high school and they want to return to their sport sooner than they should or if you later in life tear your ACL and you want to return to playing a sport, keep in mind the longer you wait, the less likelihood you have of re-injuring it and like I mentioned this research suggests that if you avoid re-injuring it, you’ll also be less likely to experience early onset of osteoarthritis in the knee.