ACL's are something everyone hears about that are associated with sports. In the athletic training world, they are always a very hot topic.
Today was a day that I was on the roads of Southwest Kansas seeing 4 of my 5 area high schools. Other than the wear and tear injuries that my basketball players are starting to feel because of the long basketball season, however the conversation I had with the girls basketball coach/athletic director at one of my schools have me wondering about this:
When do you tell an athlete to have ACL reconstruction surgery, and miss the rest of their senior year of basketball. A girl at another area high school tore her ACL approx. 3 weeks ago during a basketball game. She has spent the past 3 weeks debating if she was going to get her ACL reconstructed or if she was going to purchase a special brace to allow her to finish her senior year of basketball.
For those of you that don't know, you do NOT have to have your ACL fixed once its torn. Running and jumping are VERY difficult without an ACL, and your knee will feel very unstable without it in tact, however you can live a fairly normal life without one.
My concern is, this girl is planning on going on to the college level to play basketball. And as much as I'd like to say that males and females are completely equal, in athletics, they really aren't. The reason we're seeing more and more female ACL tears is believed to be because women's bodies weren't meant to handle the wears and tears of athletics like males were (our muscle structure isn't the same) and we have such a variation in hormones every month.
If I was an 18 year old high school athlete, I don't believe there would be any doubt in my mind that I would have surgery. I don't think a brace can provide the same effects that an ACL does, and there is no way she can build her quadriceps muscles up enough to compensate for the missing ACL before the end of basketball season.
My question is: When do athletic trainers step in and help educate athletes for long-term effects?
I'm with you in that I would have the surgery. The body wasn't made to use a brace. It was made with an ACL to do that job. I also agree that she can't build up her quadriceps muscles enough to compensate for the missing ACL before the end of the basketball season. I think having the surgery now will give her a better chance at being successful as a college player because it takes a long time to heal and be at full capacity after an ACL injury. I think as an athletic trainer it is appropriate to educate and relay the facts. Obviously you can't make the decision for them and I think the parents need to be heavily involved in the education and presentation of facts. I believe this girl and her parents need to know the long term effects, positive and negative, and be able to make an educated decision.
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