Rehabilitation As Good as Surgery for Knee Ligament Tears

A study about knee ligament tears released Wednesday, offered some interesting information. Many people who suffer a common ligament tear in their knee, do just as well with intensive physical therapy as would by having surgery.

The researchers found that more than half of the surgeries used to repair a knee injury wouldn’t be needed if intense physical therapy was used as the first option. In many cases, surgery is done after the swelling has gone down, little or no therapy is used prior to surgery.

ACL injuries are the most common type of knee injury, some 200,000 operations to repair the ligament are performed in the United States each year.

Researchers have found that treating an ACL tear should start with structured rehab instead of the early surgical option.

The research team looked at 121 people from the age of 18-35, none of these participants were professional athletes. Half of the group received surgery while the others received rehab.

Two years later, it was found that patients that had the surgical option were not doing any better than those that had the rehabilitation process.