Football stars like Francesco Totti and Roy Keane not only recovered from ACL injuries, but were said to have come back better than ever. Others, such as Michael Owen and Radamel Falcao, were less fortunate. — dpa
For an athlete or footballer, it’s probably the injury dreaded more than any other.
Not even a broken leg counts as career-threatening to the same degree as tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
This ligament connects the thigh bone to the shin bone like a hinge.
A debilitating knee injury, it is becoming increasingly common, with estimates of around 200,000 cases a year in the United States alone.
And while medical and surgical advances in recent decades allow for a usually-successful reconstruction of the ligament, doctors are finding other long-term effects to worry even the most athletic ACL patient.
The reconstruction of the ligament itself already consists of an operation, followed by up to nine months of recovery and gruelling rehabilitation before something like sports can even be attempted.
“Individuals who undergo ACL reconstruction [ACLR] are at elevated risk for developing early-onset patellofemoral joint osteoarthritis,” notes a research team from the University of Southern California in the US.
A recent study of theirs, involving 20 ACL patients and 20 with unaffected knees, was published recently by the Journal of Orthopaedic Research.
It gets worse: another research team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US have found that an ACL tear, even if followed by a successful reconstruction, can lead to “aberrant gait”.
This, in turn, means increased vulnerability to knock-on injuries, including to the other leg, and adds to the likelihood of arthritic knees later in life.
“A persistent aberrant gait pattern following ACLR, like that observed in our study, can induce joint loads that may contribute to further long-term knee joint problems,” said corresponding study author Christin Büttner.
Their study covered 58 people and also included a control group of people who had not torn an ACL or had the reconstruction surgery.
“Although gait biomechanics became more symmetrical in patients with ACLR over the first 12 months post-ACLR, the ACLR and uninvolved limbs demonstrated persistent aberrant gait biomechanics, compared with the uninjured control individuals,” the North Carolina team found, in research also published by the Journal of Orthopaedic Research. – dpa
