7 notes on athletes' return to play after ACL surgery

Orthopedic Sports Medicine

Only about half of athletes who return to play after multiple surgeries to fix a knee ligament perform to the same level they did before their surgery, reports Fox News, citing a recent British Journal of Sports Medicine meta-analysis.

Here are seven things to know:

 

1. Researchers analyzed data on athletes who underwent one surgery to fix the anterior cruciate ligament, and then a second procedure to revise the surgery or to address a new injury.

 

2. After an average of a five-year period, 84 percent of athletes continued to play, but half returned to high-level competition.

 

3. Alberto Grassi, MD, of University of Bologna in Italy, was the lead study author.

 

4. Dr. Grassi and colleagues reviewed outcomes from 23 previous studies, which including a total 1,090 patients in order to find how well athletes performed after revision ACL procedures.

 

5. 45 percent of patients had normal function of the knee after revision surgery, with 41 percent having "nearly normal function," reports Fox News.

 

6. The primary reason athletes did not return to play was due to knee-related issues 69 percent of the time, according to data on 174 patients across three studies.

 

7. The review assesses only if athletes returned to play at the final follow-up, foregoing those who returned to temporary play, reports Fox News citing the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

 

You can view the review abstract here.

 

More articles on sports medicine:
Dr. James Andrews performs elbow surgery on Red Sox's Brandon Workman
UPMC's Dr. Tanya Hagen dies at age 45
Dr. Anette Zaharoff joins team of 2018 Winter Olympics physicians: 4 key notes


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