The most devastating injury in sports: ACL tear
Due to the nature of sports, a lot of athletes are prone to severe injury. This is one reason why they are paid so much money and also why teams employ a whole host of medical specialists to look after their health and wellbeing. One of the worst injuries
that can happen to an athlete is an ACL tear. This is one of the most important ligaments in a person’s knee and it can end an athlete’s career.
The ACL or anterior cruciate ligament is one of the four major ligaments in the knee. It is essential for the stability of the knee and people’s knees cannot sustain the pressure of their body weight, if they injure it. Tearing the ACL or injuring it is
one of the most horrible injuries that an athlete can sustain. It has put sports stars out for whole seasons, and some have even seen their career end because of it.
There are several ways to injure or tear an ACL; one of the biggest reasons is landing awkwardly and the other is, to a lesser extent, through contact. Studies have shown that almost 80% of ACL tears occur when there is no contact with another player but
they take place when an athlete falls in a strange way. The injury most likely occurs when a person jumps or falls and his knee gets bent in a way that it is not supposed to and the player tears the ligament. Weirdly and for some unknown reason, female athletes
are more prone to tearing their ACL than male athletes.
A lot of sports require an athlete to have a strong and well functioning ACL. Their knee has been pivotal in turning and gives them the required agility to move in a particular direction. The reason why a torn ACL injury is so bad is because it prevents
exactly the type of movement that a lot of sports require from their players.
Once an ACL tear has occurred though, there are numerous options for recovery, and it does not always have to become a career ending injury. Post tear rehabilitation is a must and a lot of the time is required for the tear to heal. Exercise and rest also
help in recovering but sometimes the injury can be so severe that it may require immediate surgery. For athletes, surgery is the most sought after solution because they need to get back into the game as soon as possible, and they cannot take a few years out
to recover. Surgery repairs the ruptured ligaments by taking pieces of an athlete’s own knee or hamstring, and then attaching them to the knee joint.
Surgery is a great way for a sports star to get back into their sport in about 6 months to a year, depending on the severity of the injury. Even after surgery though, an athlete will require rehab and regular care on the knee. A lot of the time with proper
care can make an athlete’s knee even stronger than it was before the injury took place. Usually injured athletes, after they recover, tend to favour the other knee, the one that was not injured, because they feel they will tear their ACL again. But majority
of the time this does not happen, given the knee is taken care of by wearing leg braces for a few weeks.
Over the last few years there have been many high profile athletes who have torn their ACL. Examples include American football players Tom Brady and Willis McGahee, footballer Frankie Hejduk and even superstar golfer Tiger Woods. What is interesting about
this is the fact that even though golf is a very low impact game, the movements that athletes have to do can cause the knee ligaments to stretch and tear.
There is a lot of research going into the prevention of ACL tears at the moment and new rehab techniques and preventive measures are being looked at. However, due to the nature of sports and the physical nature of athlete’s careers, injuries such as ACL
tears will be common for a long time to come.
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