Who has torn their ACL?

FUUUCK

FUUUCK

Active member
I was just biking around and a banged the inside of my left knee off my frame pretty hard, not too painful but it was sore, then later i tried a small drop and as soon as i landed i felt some crippling pain in the same spot, i couldnt bend my knee and it felt like a hurt a ligament, its been a half hour and i can bend my knee now but i still have pain on the inside of my left knee.

my question is, on a scale of 1-10 how much does it hurt to tear your ACL or other ligaments?
 
do you mean inside as in the actual interior of your knee, or inside as in medial... the side of your knee facing your other knee? if its the first one and hurts at the top of your calf, back side of the knee, thats your acl. if its the second one thats your mcl. both suck.

i've done both at once and it hurt a lot, like 9 on the scale for about a minute and then pretty much faded away.
 
when i tore mine it hurt immediately for about a minute, about a 7 or 8 and then it wasnt bad... i had a big limp about 15 minutes later and couldnt put much weight on it. the pain was more of an achey feeling after teh immediate tear. also, if you heard a pop in your knee when you hit it.. thats not good. thats a big sign of an acl tear.

my advice, ice it for now and go to a doctor asap.. you might have to get an MRI and take it from there. keep us updated and ask for an invite to the "ACL survivors" cult
 
there is alot of stuff you can do to make your knee hurt like that...but the main signs of a torn lig or cart. is popping, locking (feels like something is stuck in there, not swollen like you can't bend it, but like somehting is getting caught) giving out, etc.

it will swell pretty good if you tear something, and there will be lotso fluid on the knee joint

acls and minisci are no fun....im 3 surgeries deep, and prolly need another....knock on wood
 
ive torn mine a few times. i dont recall it hurting much at all. just felt super unstable and what not.
 
oh and....like a 6-7 when i first tore it....then i hung out at the bottom of the pipe for 20 min, then tried to walk and it locked (tore the meniscus off the bone so it was just floating around and would get stuck in between the bones sometimes) and it turned into a 10 when that happened, went into shock....

ICE ICE ICE
 
pain is different for every person, so thats an awful way to judge it.

and i highly doubt you tore you ACL by hitting your knee on a bike. porbably just a bruise.
 
mine didn't hurt to the point where i thought nothing was wrong. here i am 4 months later with a torn acl, mcl, and menicus damage with little pain at all. it just feels super unstable like it could pop out at any second. i would get it checked out by a doctor before you take anyone on ns's advice.
 
Jeah that is definetly a 10. I tore the meniscus this winter when playing floorball. The worst pain possible
 
i definately hurt a ligament, it wasnt when i hit my knee that there was any problem, it was after i put stress on it.

nothings torn though, i dont think
 
funny thing is menisci don't have nerve endings.....its the surrounding tissue and such....deff fun to tear it almost in half, then have both pieces floating around in your knee for a month and half while the dr.'s wait for the swelling to go down enough to operate
 
^to get the swelling down for me, my doc stuck a needle in there and sucked out a lot of the fluid. haha i watched him do it too.. it kinda hurt
 
when i did my MCL it hurt right away but i had full mobility, and i skied down to the bottom and walked to the clinic. then it started to swell really bad and i lost tonnes of mobility
 
Yea, I've done it. Hurts pretty bad. I did mine worse than you tho. I wasn't moving shit all for a week. took 6 months to heal properly. over a year before i could do everything, like pivoting in basketball hurt like a bitch and my knee would lock from time to time. although that was partly because i tore the acl, pcl, mcl and a piece of my meniscus.
 
last surgery they drained it 3 times, and my doc was one that didn't believe in anestheic if they were draining it to test for infection....so no numbing...just straight put a BIG ass needle into the middle of my knee
 
i havent like completely torn it, i havent torn all the way, or somthin like that, still hurt like a bitch
 
They did that to me like 3½ week after the surgery whenn the swelling would not go down, that too hurted a bit.
 
haha yea i know the needle they use is MASSIVE.. and its got some sort of clear container attachted so you can see all the crap in your knee...
 
yup....gross shit...

the worst was after i had the pin in my femur and the screws in my tibia, i had edema in my lower leg, which decided to pour out of one of the incision's while i was in class a couple weeks after surgery....good way to get sent home!
 
haha wow that does sound like a good way to get sent home... i had surgery on a friday (missed school for that) and went back to school on monday, but couldnt make it hte whole day.. the teachers pretty much asked me to go home.. they said it was "too soon for me to be back in school"

cant complain about that though :D
 
i duno about everyone else, but when i tore mine i knew something was wrong like right away. we had a dumbass trainer that game and he didnt think anything was wrong. i went to the clinic the next day and ended up with some chick-doctor (chicks should not be doctors), and she didnt think anything was wrong. i had to convince my mom to drive into the states to buffalo to get an MRI before any doctor was able to tell me that i had actually torn it
 
That's exactly what I thought when I tore my ACL. I was in the clinic and they told me to walk and four steps later I collapsed after my knee gave out.

So don't count out tearing anything, cause that's what I did, and it was quite a shock when the doc told me I tore my ACL and meniscus.
 
this is one way to tear it....he foot is pointing at the camera. sorry its small

adskiam
 
I had surgery today.

It's a wild time.

I read no other part of this thread.

But I like that picture that's like, 2 posts up.

Wikkid.
 
me, twice. 3 surgeries. The pain after the initial trauma is aching in the back (posterior) of the knee and inside. Instalibity is a big clue too, as well as absurd amounts of swelling after a few days. Sharp pain usually goes away after 3-4 days.
 
i tore mine skiing back in the end of april...came down off a table sideways and off balance. it was probably the worst pain i've ever felt, or at least right up there with breaking my wrist, but it went away pretty fast. i was able to ski down but then i just hung out with our super hot liftie the rest of the day. i actually skied the next day (bad idea) and it never kept me from walking...it just hurt pretty bad for about 2 weeks. but i thought a torn acl would hurt a lot worse, so i was thinking there wasn't anything wrong. if it's the side of your knee, sounds more like mcl or meniscus, either of which would be better than the acl i think (though i hear the pcl is the worst to tear). meniscus surgery is just arthroscopic i believe, so it's not a huge deal, but if you need a new ligament...that kind of sucks. i had surgery about a week ago now and i can kind of walk on it now but i'm not supposed to.
 
also, if you just tore your acl, an mri is probably a waste of money. the doctors could tell just by moving mine that it was torn and they didn't suspect anything else was so they just operated. if they go in and find damage to another ligament or meniscus or something, they can deal with that then. but yeah, an mri might not be necessary.
 
ya sure buddy, good thing you went to med school right?

If you have a trauma with enough force to tear your ACL, chances are there was enough trauma to tear something else if it was done properly. Ever heard of the unhappy triad? Didn't think so.
 
read my whole comment buddy. haven't heard it referred to as the "unhappy" triad, but i take it you're referring to an acl/mcl/pcl injury (or you could throw an lcl in there). obviously if that's the case, you didn't tear JUST your acl. i tore JUST my acl and had doctors good enough to recognize that, so we didn't waste 1k on an unnecessary mri.
 
and if you read what I wrote, you'd see that most acl injuries have enough force to tear something else, so an MRI isn't a waste of money. Insurance pays for it anyways, unless you have shitty insurance; but thanks for the comments fella.
 
alright, but that's not always the case. if you fully tear a ligament, you can tell by testing the stability of the knee...there's a device they use to do this, not sure what it's called. if the doctors aren't sure what the problem is, of course an mri is necessary. but sometimes it's obvious. the first doctor i saw looked at my knee for maybe 5 minutes and told me right there my acl was torn and an mri wasn't needed. and not everyone has insurance.
 
It's the anterior drawer test (acl) and posterior drawer test or sag test (pcl)that are used for testing stability/laxity.
 
Sounds like something i did, i dont think i torned mine but it hurted pretty bad. It took a few months to be back and doing stuff again.
 
that is the test, its not a device....you just have to be able to get the muscles to relax and not "gaurd".....thats another good sign you did something wrong...

MRI's work well until you've had a surgury or two, then there gets to be too much scare tissue to see anything clearly
 
yeah those are the tests, but the test using the device is called the k-t-test. aka knee test. they strap a couple of different parts onto your leg, and then move your tibia as far as it will go up from your femur. this distance is measured and graphed via computer. they do it on your healthy knee too, and compare the difference in measurements. from this they can tell if your acl is torn or what. my healthy knee had a movement of 4mm and my injured knee had an 18mm movement.

i had several physios and doctors tell me that MRI's are not the most reliable way to tell if there is ACL damage or not. if the ligament is fully torn through the middle, then yes it is obvious. but different types of tears don't show up. such as a complete tear that is sort of diagonal through the ligament. also, a more than 50% rupture is called a complete tear, even though part of the ligament is still intact. these tears are not always obvious on MRI's.

case in point... did something to my knee skiing. went to the hospital, did xrays, it was too swollen to really move but the doctors said nothing was wrong. a few days later i saw a physio, a sports doctor, and another physio. all called it a textbook acl tear. MRI showed the same, along with partial LCL, MCL, meniscus damage, and fractured femoral condoyle and tibial plateau. went to see a surgeon, who wanted a more current MRI. had a 2nd one done, no damage whatsoever. had a scope anyways to check things out, and complete rupture of ACL, partial LCL, partial MCL, meniscus. the rest had healed by now.

so yeah. sometimes it's hard to tell without actually getting a look inside the knee.

another thing, with swelling and pain: the pain varies greatly from person to person. the acl often comes with other knee injuries. for example, fracture of the tibial plateau and femoral condoyle. this causes pretty severe pain. also a ruptured MCL is common, and very painful. other times, for other people, the only sign is a 'pop' when the injury actually occurs. others dont' notice anything.

for swelling: the acl is inside the joint capsule in your knee. this is a bag of lubricating fluid that allows your knee to flex and extend normally and without pain. the acl can tear inside the capsule, while the capsule will remain intact. this type of injury has minimal swelling. other times, the capsule can tear and the fluid seeps into the rest of the knee and causes major swelling. this type of injury is often more painful also.

in conclusion, there is no way to tell for certain whether an acl is torn until a doctor physically sees it.

however, typical signs are:

-a twisting fall

-a pop sound/feeling inside the knee

-immediate extreme pain that subsides quickly

-a feeling of instability

-aching pain in the back of the knee, which feels like upper calf pain

-swelling

-and finally, an MRI/k-t test
 
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