CONDITION: Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Injury

DESCRIPTION:

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in athletes are a very common cause of knee pain that we see nearly every day at Caring Medical, in varying levels of severity. The ACL is a powerful ligament extending from the top of the tibia (shin) to the bottom surface of the femur (thigh). The anterior cruciate ligament prevents these bones from moving backward and forward or side-to-side. An injury of this ligament occurs in 4 out of every 1,000 people, with women prone to a higher incidence of injury than men. The injury rate is as much as eight times higher among some sports. In fact, basketball, soccer and volleyball consistently produce some of the highest ACL injury rates across various age groups.

How does an ACL injury develop?
ACL tears may be due to contact or non-contact injuries. A sudden stop combined with a change in direction while running, pivoting, landing from a jump or overextending the knee joint in either direction can cause an injury to the ACL. A blow to the side of the knee, such as may occur during a football tackle, may also result in an ACL tear. ACL injuries may also occur in conjunction with injuries to other ligaments of the knee, such as an lateral collateral ligament (LCL) injury, a medial collateral ligament (MCL) injury or a posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injury.

What are the symptoms of an ACL injury?
Symptoms of an ACL injury include a popping sound, pain at the time of impact that dies away with time and swelling that may come on rapidly due to bleeding within the joint. In the later stages, when the swelling has decreased, joint instability and pain when the leg is bent and the tibia pulled forward may occur.

Conventional medical treatments may help relieve the symptoms of an ACL injury, but they do not address the root of the problem. By strengthening structural weaknesses in the body, as natural medicine treatments like Prolotherapy do, pain associated with an ACL injury may be alleviated permanently.