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Car Accident Knee Injury? Surgical Advances being made on PCL injuries | Seattle, Kirkland Car Accident Attorney

People who have suffered a knee ligament injury in a car accident or by playing sports may have new hope for PCL injuries. Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injuries are less frequent than ACL injuries. However, PCL injuries are more likely in car accidents or frontal blows to the knee or leg, like hitting a dashboard or falling forward hard on your knee.

New surgical techniques being developed may offer hope for better treatment in the future for PCL tears.  Partial tears of the PCL usually do not require surgical repair.  Partial PCL tears are often treated with rest, physical therapy and other conservative nonsurgical treatment methods.  Complete PCL tears often require surgical repair.  A new article in the Journal of American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons discusses recent progress in reconstructing torn PCLs.

Traditional surgery involved taking one ligament graft from your body or from a cadaver, passing it through a tunnel in the shinbone and attaching it to the bone in one place.  A couple new surgical techniques have been developed.  One new option is to take two grafts, each being a thinner graft than in the one graft procedure, and attach them at two places instead of just one.  The second new option is known as in-lay reconstruction, where instead of a inserting in the tunnel down the shinbone, the ligament graft is screwed directly into the shinbone.  However, with in-lay reconstruction the graft is more likely to fray and stretch out.

Lab research suggests the new surgical methods may be better than traditional methods.  However, clinical trials have not been performed yet, and it has not been fully determined if these new methods will be better or worse than traditional surgery techniques. 

Patients are well advised to seek out an orthopedic surgeon who has experience in PCL reconstruction if considering PCL surgery.