Anterior Cruciate Ligament Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Anterior Cruciate Ligament - Essay Example The tearing of the ACL usually occurs due to a sudden direction change, or when a deceleration force crosses the knee. "The patient often feels or hears a popping sensation, has the rapid onset of swelling, and develops a buckling sensation in the knee when attempting to change direction." (The Center for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine, 2003).In order to properly diagnose an ACL injury, there must be a thorough examination, which would include: determining the mechanism of injury, examining the knee, determining the presence or absence of blood within the joint, and performing diagnostic studies. Once a tear of the ACL has been confirmed through clinical evaluation and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), the unstable knee can now be repaired. "This is only possible if the ACL is of good quality and if the ligament can be passed posterior to the PCL, both of which are determined in surgeryacutely (recently) torn ligaments are typically of better quality and therefore have a greater chan ce of being repaired as opposed to the chronically torn ligaments." (Stone, Walgenbach, and Mullin, n.d.).There are many methods which are used to reconstruct an ACL, the most common one of which in the past some have referred to as the 'Gold Standard'.