It should come as no surprise that knee injuries are common given all that these large joints do in terms of providing you with support and mobility. Drilling down further, almost half of all knee injuries involve anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears, which come with their own set of considerations when it comes to healing.
If you’re looking for information about ACL tears, you’ve come to the right place. William Schell, MD is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in knee injuries. While Dr. Schell excels in the surgical arena, we also understand the value in allowing the body time to heal on its own. But does this approach work with ACL tears? Let’s take a look.
We’re sure you got a crash course in knee anatomy after tearing your ACL, so we’ll keep our description brief. Each of your knees features four ligaments that stabilize your knee joints, including the:
While you can damage any of these ligaments, ACL injuries are, far and away, the most common because this connective tissue is responsible for the rotational stability in your knee.
As with any damage to soft tissues in your body, there are different degrees of an ACL injury:
When you have an ACL injury, our first task is to determine the extent of the damage, which will dictate your treatment options moving forward.
Since we’re discussing whether an ACL can heal on its own after an injury, we can say that the answer depends on three main points:
So, if you have a grade 1 ACL injury and your knee feels fairly stable, you can modify your activity levels for a few months and rely on physical therapy to help the tissue heal on its own.
Conversely, if you have a complete ACL tear, your knee is unstable, and your active life is important to you, understand that letting the ligament heal on its own is risky. In many cases of complete ACL tears, the ligament doesn’t stitch back together on its own because it doesn’t enjoy a good supply of blood.
While you can continue to function with a torn ACL, your knee won’t likely regain its former stability, which can curb your active life quite a lot. Not to mention, a chronically unstable knee can lead to further damage, such as meniscus tears, down the road.
That said, if you have extensive damage in your ACL and you act quickly to brace your knee, modify your activities, and engage fully in physical therapy, it’s not unheard of that the tissues can heal without surgery.
Despite the fact that Dr. Schell’s focus is surgical, we often take a wait-and-see approach before jumping into surgery. So, we recommend that you work with us on nonsurgical solutions for your ACL tear first. But should they prove ineffective, we can explore surgical repair.
To figure out which approach is best for your ACL tear, please contact our New York City office, which is located on Columbus Circle on the Upper West Side.
