Bryan Vopat, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine physician at The University of Kansas Health System Sports Medicine and Performance Center, discusses how an ACL injury can affect an athlete psychologically – along with the importance of talking about it.
I actually tore my ACL when I was in high school. It made me realize that there's more to it than just the injury, that there's a such a large psychological component. And if we can make people aware of that and that we can treat it all that our patients will do much better. I think any person who's in high school or college and who's an athlete that such a large aspect of who they are as an athlete that when they tear their ACL, they feel they lose part of themselves.
The psychological aspects that make an athlete very effective and very motivated actually hurts them sometimes after they have an injury, because they're ready to go and they just can't, their body's not responding. And that's the psychological aspects that we see. That they lose their identity of being this motivated person because all of the sudden they really can't be. And they try to, so it works against them and it can kind of lead into this depression and stuff if they're not careful, if we don't identify it just make them aware of what's happening. I think just being aware of what's going on, it really helps people out.
If you have a very active 36-year-old, it's gonna be very similar as treating someone who's, like, they're 16.
But there's a higher re-tear rate in the younger people just because they're so much more active and you have to, kind of, slow them down for a little bit until things to heal in. But, unless you have the very young, they're like 10, 11-years-old, everything is -- this surgery is fairly similar. The biggest aspect is the, kind of, treating the psychological aspect, again, of how important these sports are to their everyday life. More so than, usually, a 36-year-old.
The first three months is just allowing everything to, kind of, heal in before they can really get moving. And I think that's the hardest part. Their knee is -- they just have to wait for everything to heal in because it takes that long for the graft to actually mature inside their knee. And I think that's a big psychological aspect that they're like , you know, we feel ready why can't I do anything yet? And then so they just have to take time. And I think that's something, a psychological aspect as well, that why aren't they back where they want to be yet? Or will they ever get beck there? And I think we have to reassure them that takes long. And just because they're playing even at six to eight months, it can take a year to 18 months to get better. Unfortunately, we just see young players in the NFL who have their, this genetic makeups where they think we should be perfect in six months. And, in reality, that's just not the case. And we've actually seen studies recently showing that it's protective to be out of the sport seven, eight months and every month after six months that you are actually less likely to tear your ACL.