knee surgery. acl replacement, use mine or cadaver?

manglerBMX

manglerBMX

Veteran
so i'm having knee surgery the end of october. torn meniscus in both sides of knee and torn acl. fun huh? doc doesnt understand how i've been walking for the past year...

but anyway, i got an option. i can either use tendon from the front of my knee of from a cadaver. using the tendon from the front of my knee could leave my knee tender for life, which aint gonna fly pretty being a videographer. so that points me in the direction of the cadaver's. downfall there is risk of infection or desease from previous dead person. although, that risk is very very low. the risk for tender knee is very very high. as of now i'm feeling the after market part.

anyone else have to make this decision?
 
I had mine done using my tendon. Jut make sure you have a good surgeon and when I say good surgeon, someone who operates on athletes. My doctor was Russel Warren at Hospital for Special Surgery in NY and he is the Giants team doctor. If you are in Carolina find out who the sports teams use.
 
I see dead people, well sorta, if you have a peice of dead person in you, does that make you part zombie?
 
Use the cadaver parts.

That way if someone disses you you can get in their face: don't mess with me, pal, they keep me running using parts from dead people.
 
this is going to sound like a dumb question, but what symptoms did you have before finding out?

the reason i ask is i tore up my knee several months ago and went to the emergency room. they did an xray, but not an mri. i couldn't walk on the knee at for a week and reaggravated it again 3 more times since then. the knee feels a lot better now, but it's still not 100%. it's most noticeable walking up steps.

what were your experiences as far as pain and how it affected your daily routine? i've never had a knee injury before this so i'm trying to find out if is something that will heal naturally, but takes a long time or if it's something i should ask to get an mri for.
 
I fell over my knee and ripped it to peices a few years ago. No bone problems, but MRI scans showed small carilidge tears. I couldnt walk on it properly for about a month, and it still twinges now, especially when its cold.

I guess having a dead guys tendon is no differnt to a having a heart transplant or something....
 
I guess having a dead guys tendon is no differnt to a having a heart transplant or something....
Click to expand...

Well kinda, in the way that you could live with out one of those, but not the other
 
UGAFAN,
i dislocated my knee a while back. did the same thing as you. went to ER, xrays, etc.. doc said was fine. so after it felt better i went back to my normal routine. which is riding a bmx bike, not the average dudes normal routine tho, haha. and then i tweaked it out again. and then i knew something wasn't right with it. i'm a mind over matter person so i just let it feel better and then go about my ways. well then it got to where it was feeling pretty loose. i didnt feel comfortable on my bike anymore. it would kind of tweak and pop out of place getting in to bed, getting into car, walking around a sharp corner, etc... wasn't very fun. but i've been very busy as of late and couldn't afford to loose the time i knew it was going to take to get it fixed. i just got done with a huge video project that involved a lot of traveling, so i had the time to get it checked out now. scheduled an appointment with an orthopedic specialist, got an MRI and boom, problem solved, and surgery scheduled.

but anytime i hear of anyone tweaking a knee out i suggest them get an MRI. xrays can only show bones pretty much. MRI can see the tendons, ligaments, bones and anything else within a joint from multiple angles. but get it checked out soon. the longer you wait, the worse it can get. if its a torn meniscus, which is fairly common, it can be fixed with a simple endoscopy and you can be on your way in a couple of weeks. but if left untreated, that torn meniscus can wreak havoc on your joint. my doc explained it as pieces of gravel in a watch.
 
I live in a ski town where torn ACLs are about as common as bumps and bruises. I and several friends have had patellar or hamstring grafts and several others I know have had cadaver grafts.

They both work. But from my experience and talking with others the consensus seems to be the following:

Do you need your knee to work closer to full potential in a shorter amount of time but at the potential risk of long term problems like overflexion and some joint looseness? Get the cadaver.

If you can sit on your ass a little longer after surgery and rehab your knee in a slightly longer more methodical time frame at the benefit of an overall better tendon replacement in the long term, get the native graft.

I know people who have retorn a cadaver years later, and people who have torn a native graft by being impatient and returning to activity too soon.

A native graft (and a cadaver graft to some extent) essentially become assimilated into your bone structure. Neither is your own ACL. But a cadaver is at least an ACL which will behave like one sooner. But your own tissue will be recognized sooner by your body and become living tissue again in a more long term sustainable way.

Both serve the structural purpose but in different ways. This is at least what I get from my own surgery and having about 80-90% of my ski buddies having gone through at least one of the procedures.

I got the patellar graft. 8 years later, life is good. Took me about a month to start really be able to pedal a bike in a meaningful way. If you go that route just be patient with rehab.

Judging by your username I figured a fellow biker's input might be welcome. If you were someone who weren't any sort of athlete, I'd say it really doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
 
go with what ever the hospital for special surgeries says. My mom had double knee replacments there, and she is running around like a spring chicken now.... @ age 50 after 35 years of Early onset Rhuemetism.
 
hoarp001 said:
I fell over my knee and ripped it to peices a few years ago. No bone problems, but MRI scans showed small carilidge tears. I couldnt walk on it properly for about a month, and it still twinges now, especially when its cold.

I guess having a dead guys tendon is no differnt to a having a heart transplant or something....
Click to expand...

but i think the heart is still alive when its put into you... this is like grafting a sausage link in to your knee..... but works... so who cares..
 
Hey ManglerBMX I have had my hip replaced a couple of times and the last time they had to repair the damage I did by working on it for about three weeks before getting in and having surgery. I had to have a half inch of ground up cadaver bone packed in the socket and re-routered to fit the new socket. I haven't had any problems with the cadaver bone. All I can say is get a good doctor and look at his track record.

Hey drk3p don't know about zombie but I'm from the great state of Maine so I'm a Mainiac.
 
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