An ACL tear used to be career ending for some athletes
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An ACL tear used to be career ending for some athletes, but advancements made in the last 30 years mean that most patients are now able to perform at the same level after surgery and those improvements in sport medicine have benefited the rest of us.
In 1951 it was diagnosed as a sprained knee but the injury that stunted Mickey Mantle’s career was a torn anterior cruciate ligament. He played for 17 years with a torn ACL, later came the what ifs. What kind of athlete could he have been if he hadn’t been injured?
Dr. David Levy at McMaster’s David Braley sport medicine and rehabilitation clinic says it wasn’t until the early 1970s that doctors began diagnosing and operating on torn ACLs. A few years later, Dr. Robert Jackson brought arthroscopic tools to North America and he began repairing torn ligaments through small incisions in the skin, eliminating the damage done by large, clumsy instruments.
“More specific and intricate work can be done within the knee joint without opening it up.”
Levy says all ACL patients can regain their former movement with thorough rehab, and time.
