bigskydoc":yqbj0ovq said:When reconstructing the ACL, there are a few options for obtaining the graft.
1 - Allograft (from another (dead) person). Not usually used in young, healthy athletes as the stress they put on the graft results in a high rate of failure
2 - Autograft (from the patient who is getting the repair). We either select a hamstring tendon or a patellar tendon and it can be taken from the opposite leg. For young, athletic people, opposite leg patellar graft seems to offer the quickest recovery and best long term result. (Not every surgeon agrees with that statement)
The compression stocking used to prevent blood clots looks like hose, not an ACE wrap like you see in that shot. ACE wraps are used for compression after the leg is operated on.
Combine all that with the fact that you can see the telltale bulge of a dressing on the front of the right knee under the ACE wrap, and you can be pretty confident that they harvested a right patellar autograft to repair his left ACL.
- bsd RPA
Beat me to it.
Richardson has torn his ACL before. Like Doc said, you can go patellar tendon or hamstring, but my surgeon told me the hamstring was a longer recovery time. They take a chunk of your patellar tendon and it fills in with scar tissue, so you can't harvest it more than once. Doctors will prefer to harvest from the same leg, as obviously it's already opened up and the recovery is a bit easier.
If you tear it again, or the graft fails, then you go to the other patellar tendon. Then you go with a cadaver tendon or go to the hamstring. My surgeon told me that the hamstring is just as solid of a graft, just a longer recovery. I felt really weird about putting parts of a dead body into mine, so I went with the patellar tendon graft.
Poor guy.