Dr. Jeff Abrams
Princeton, New Jersey

After surgery, your knee should feel secure but subjectively weak. The soreness in front of the knee and shin is due to the tunnel placement. It will take a little while to regain normal knee flexibility.

F. Alan Barber MD, FACS
Plano, Texas

The success rate for this procedure is about 95%. Some patients experience pain after this injury and the surgery, but that is usually due to cartilage damage from the initial injury. As far as function goes, we return our patients with patellar tendon autografts to half speed running between 6 and 8 weeks. Pivoting, non-contact sports begin at 12 weeks, and with the special sports brace, full-unlimited contact sports may begin between 12 and 16 weeks after surgery. The intention is to restore full-unlimited function as soon as possible.

Dr. Don Johnson
Ottawa, Canada

95% of the patients can expect to have a stable knee after ACL reconstruction. However, some patients may have persistent knee pain with certain activities. This residual pain may be due to the irreparable damage to the meniscus or articular cartilage.

Dr. Hugh West
Salt Lake City, Utah

I tell my patients that they have a ninety percent or better chance of returning to whatever level of activity they want to get back to. Certainly there are professional athletes that successfully return to the highest level of sport after their operation, which means that their knee becomes as good as it can be after this kind of an injury and surgery. However, nearly everyone can tell which knee was operated on, even years after their surgery. Those people who are in that ten percent of patients who are not as active as they want to be after surgery almost always have suffered some other damage to the knee at the time of the original injury. Most commonly, this is an additional injury to the meniscus, the surface cartilage, or one of the other ligaments in the knee.