ACL SURGERY WHATS AHEAD FOR TIGER WOODS

Tiger Woods is done for the year, but not without one last major that he said might have been his best ever.

Woods explained why Wednesday when he revealed he will have season-ending surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left knee that he injured 10 months ago.

He also suffered a double stress fracture of his left tibia two weeks before the U.S. Open, ignoring doctors' advice to take six weeks off to let it heal. And he still won the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, going 91 holes over five days on a knee that was getting worse.

"Now, it is clear that the right thing to do is to listen to my doctors, follow through with this surgery and focus my attention on rehabilitating my knee," Woods said on his Web site.


He had arthroscopic surgery April 15 to clean out cartilage in his left knee, bypassing ACL surgery with hopes it could get him through the 2008 season. But the stress fracture and a ligament that could no longer sustain a powerful swing made it impossible to keep going.
Surgery for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries involves reconstructing or repairing the ACL.

ACL reconstruction surgery uses a graft to replace the ligament. The most common grafts are autografts using part of your own body, such as the tendon of the kneecap (patellar tendon) or one of the hamstring tendons. Other good choices include allograft tissue, which is donor material.

In repair surgery, the ends of the torn ligament are sewn back together.
Most ACL surgery is done by reconstructing the ACL because reconstruction gives better results than repair surgery. Repair surgery generally is only used in the case of an avulsion fracture (a separation of the ligament and a piece of the bone from the rest of the bone). In this case, the bone fragment connected to the ACL is reattached to the bone.

ACL surgery is done by making small incisions in the knee and inserting instruments for surgery through these incisions (arthroscopic surgery) or by cutting a large incision in the knee (open surgery).

What To Expect After Surgery
Arthroscopic surgery is often done on an outpatient basis, where you do not spend a night in the hospital. Other surgery may require staying in the hospital for a couple of days.

To care for your incision while it heals, you need to keep it clean and dry and watch for signs of infection.

Physical rehabilitation after ACL surgery may take several months to a year. The length of time until you can return to normal activities or sports is different for every person; it may range from 6 to 12 weeks.

Why It Is Done
The goal of ACL surgery is to restore normal or almost normal stability in the knee and the level of function you had before the knee injury, limit loss of function in the knee, and prevent injury or degeneration to other knee structures.

Not all ACL tears require surgery. You and your health professional will decide whether rehabilitation only or surgery plus rehabilitation is right for you.