Often referred to by the American Journal Of Sports Medicine as the "Holy Grail of Orthopedics," finding a way to repair a person's own damaged ACL. Until nearly two decades ago, a torn ACL was almost certainly a career ending injury. The gold standard since the early 1990s has been what is know as an ACL Reconstruction, which involves taking a graft from a persons tendon or muscle in another part of the body and replace the ligament all together. The reason being, the ACL is the only ligament in the knee that cannot repair itself. Dr. Martha Murray, an orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, has begun to explore the inside of the knee to find a solution. It has been concluded that the ACL is coated in synovial fluid, which prevents blood from clotting, a fluid that is not present around other ligaments, more results and experiments can be seen here.
The reason for the recent push for a solution has been a violent spike in damaged knee ligaments. This summer, after two weeks of NFL training camps, 15 players had their seasons ended by an ACL reconstruction. As athletes strive to be quicker, every change of direction leaves them at risk for a ruptured ligament. Athletes have generally found success in the procedure though. Robert Griffin III (pictured right) started week one of the NFL season just 8 months after going under the knife. He has demonstrated steady improvement each week of the season, and seems to be close to the peak form that NFL fans were so accustomed to seeing. Bulls guard Derrick Rose, although only playing in the preseason so far, has seemed quicker than ever in his first 8 games and has put up staggering numbers.
Despite no advancements in an imperfect procedure, high caliber athletes such as Rose and Griffin are able to effectively revive their careers, as are athletes everywhere. Eventually science will find a better treatment option, but the fact that it has been an enigma for this long is fascinating in itself.
I feel as though this blog raises the issue of pushing your limits as an athlete. While this is often regarded as a positive thing I wonder if in some ways pushing your limits isn’t really worth it. When athletes push themselves to the point where receiving serious injuries becomes commonplace and is just shrugged off as a necessary sacrifice, I think we have to start asking this question
ReplyDeleteHi Ryan,. I'm with Erik on this. I was hoping that this post would go in a different direction: something uniquely American -- what we expect from our athletes, our entertainment. There's nothing wrong with the angle you chose -- your own injury, but you have to make it about a larger theme or relate it to a contemporary issue. Far too much space was devoted to exposition. Keep at it, tho. There's a great topic in here somewhere.
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