When Can I Return to Play After an Orthopedic Sports Injury?
Posted on Jun 7, 2018 9:45am PDT
AS AN ORTHOPEDIC surgeon specializing in sports medicine, the timing of
when a player can "return to sport" is one of the most frequently
asked questions of me – from the patients themselves, their parents
(if they're minors) and from the media, especially if I'm being
interviewed about a professional athlete. The answer is rarely the same,
and I'm sure you can understand why. Recovery is as unique to the
individual as is their genetic makeup – it really does depend on
a wide variety of factors. However, for many common orthopedic injuries,
there's usually a fairly consistent timeline for return to sport or
active living. In the interest of providing at least some answer to this
frequently asked question, we'll dive into it here.
Out of curiosity, I sometimes visit the internet and type in search terms
I think my patients might use when they're "paging Dr. Google,"
often in an effort to see what kind of misinformation is out there and
how I can help correct it. Interestingly enough, when I begin to type
in "ACL…," Google smart-populates my search with this
first option: "ACL recovery timeline." I find this curious mainly
because that pops up before "ACL tear." We sure are an impatient
society, aren't we? Before we want to know about the injury itself,
we want to know how long it's going to take to heal. Hurry up already!
Read the entire blog post by Dr. Mandelbaum by Clicking Here.