Most active people who have significant injury to their anterior cruciate ligament end up with a surgical reconstruction either immediately after the injury or shortly thereafter. There has long been a debate regarding non-operative treatment of ACL injury and whether or not it simply leads to further injury to other structures of the knee such as the meniscii.

Recently, surgeons from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, Korea identified about 20% of the patients presenting with ACL injuries (48 people, including 18 women) who they thought should be treated conservatively without surgery. At follow-up about 12 months later, 46 of these individuals showed some restoration of the ACL on MRI and, at about 2 years after the injury, they showed improved laxity. The authors concluded that a select group of patients with an acute ACL injury can successfully undergo non-operative treatment and that unnecessary early ACL reconstruction surgery should be avoided.

This will be a strongly debated finding as many surgeons feel that, particularly in younger patients, such conservative treatment will inevitably lead to further injury. See the post for March 27, 2010 for a differing point of view.

Read an abstract of the article here.