Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Repair

So anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction is done on people who have ruptured their cruciate ligament either through a sports injury or through any other injury. You will normally find your knee gets quite unstable, especially if you want to play sports or when you are doing something and you want to suddenly change direction. Occasionally physiotherapy can help in rebuilding your knee muscles so that they stabilize the knee and you don't need a cruciate ligament, but more often than not you do. The normal way of dealing with this now is we reconstruct your cruciate ligament using your hamstring tendons taken from the back of your knee. We make drill holes in the bone, we pass the tendon through and we fix it together. This is usually done as a day case procedure, so you will come in and have the operation and go home the same day. You are usually able to walk back home. Occasionally you may need clutches for 24 to 48 hours. The most important thing about an ACL reconstruction is you will need a very long and diligent physiotherapy course for over nine months to get the benefit out of the surgery, otherwise it doesn't work. Like anything in life, ACA reconstruction is an operation that has its risks. The usual risks are infection, blood clots, we do give you antibiotics, and we do give you blood thinning agents occasionally. The more important ones in ACA reconstruction are your ligament that we use can sometimes stretch or even snap at the time of the operation or afterwards during your physiotherapy course. The success rate of an ACA reconstruction is about 95% so 5 in 100 people will not be happy because of the things that I mentioned. You can also have some stiffness after the operation and very occasionally you might have to go back to theatre 2 or 3 months later to take off some of the scar tissue through a pre whole surgery. Otherwise you are able to get back to sports and usually contact sports in about 9 to 12 months time.