Paul Richardson says .... surgery went well

[Hawks46]

When reconstructing the ACL, there are a few options for obtaining the graft.

1 - Allograft (from another (dead) person). Not usually used in young, healthy athletes as the stress they put on the graft results in a high rate of failure

2 - Autograft (from the patient who is getting the repair). We either select a hamstring tendon or a patellar tendon and it can be taken from the opposite leg. For young, athletic people, opposite leg patellar graft seems to offer the quickest recovery and best long term result. (Not every surgeon agrees with that statement)

The compression stocking used to prevent blood clots looks like hose, not an ACE wrap like you see in that shot. ACE wraps are used for compression after the leg is operated on.

Combine all that with the fact that you can see the telltale bulge of a dressing on the front of the right knee under the ACE wrap, and you can be pretty confident that they harvested a right patellar autograft to repair his left ACL.

- bsd RPA

Beat me to it.

Richardson has torn his ACL before. Like Doc said, you can go patellar tendon or hamstring, but my surgeon told me the hamstring was a longer recovery time. They take a chunk of your patellar tendon and it fills in with scar tissue, so you can't harvest it more than once. Doctors will prefer to harvest from the same leg, as obviously it's already opened up and the recovery is a bit easier.

If you tear it again, or the graft fails, then you go to the other patellar tendon. Then you go with a cadaver tendon or go to the hamstring. My surgeon told me that the hamstring is just as solid of a graft, just a longer recovery. I felt really weird about putting parts of a dead body into mine, so I went with the patellar tendon graft.

Poor guy.

 

[Our Man in Chicago]

I cannot wait until bioprinting makes this state-of-the-art surgery look like barbarism.

Until then, get well soon, PR.

 

[korboko]

Hope he feels better so he can play in a Super Bowl against Luck and the Colts whenever that might be.

 

[jms71]

Does anyone know who the surgeon was who operated on Paul?

 

[Hawks46]

My wife just told me they sometimes do that to prevent blood clotting, but she wasn't 100%.

This is 100% correct. In each of my 4 back surgeries, I was measured for "socks" that go all the way up my legs. They had me wear them for surgery, and a little while after until I was ambulatory to prevent blood clotting.

I doubt that's relevant here. You wouldn't want compression socks over the surgically repaired area (BSD probably knows more than I do), but you are ambulatory almost immediately after surgery. I got mine done in the Marine Corps by the Navy, and they had a very aggressive (at the time) rehab process. I was walking the day after surgery (they made me use crutches in the hospital) and doing heel slides the day after surgery. You need to stay moving, as the worst thing that can happen to you is that graft starts shrinking. When that happens, your leg will start to bend, and you won't be able to straighten it. The hardest thing to do after an ACL surgery is completely straighten your leg.

He might have a harder time of it, and everyone heals differently. The best thing going for Paul is that he's in elite shape and he doesn't weigh very much. I could be wrong here, but from my experience they didn't use any compression items on me as you wanted to be able to move your legs around and stay flexible.