As I was not happy to wait until end of the month or about 2 weeks' time to have the knee surgery done, I started to look for alternatives.
I thought of my own orthopaedic who I have consulted on my problem left knee ( having osteoarthritis or OA ). I decided to give him a call and told him of my son's situation.
I was glad that he was enthusiastic to help me and we managed to get an appointment to see him the following day.
We took the MRI along for the appointment.
Dr Lim did not look at the MRI but took some time to explain to us the muscles around the knee joint and how they work. Then he examined Jason's both knee; starting with the good knee and then the injured knee. In short, he was able to confirm that Jason has a torn ACL as his knee joint is slipping forward. ( I think the test that he did is called the Lachman's test. )
Dr then look at the MRI and confirmed that it was indeed a torn ACL and surprisingly, the meniscus seems to be in order.
Dr briefed us on the pros and cons of having a allograft versus autograft. He can do both and we could still proceed with the allograft as he has stock now ( also from a reputable supplier from US ). However, he recommended that we re-consider to do an autograft instead.
His reasons were :
- taking Jason's own hamstring ligament would not affect his hamstring much; maybe only 1% of the strength
- taking a dead man ligament; no 100% guarantee of disease free like Aids and these are dead people who were above 60 years old
- though an additional cut is required to extract the hamstring, and potentially some soreness around the hamstring area, recovery is almost the same
- most of his patients choose autograft and if there is a need to replaced the ACL again, then to opt for allograft ( that's what happened to a young patient of his, a school ruby player )
Dr shared more information and statistics on the ACL surgery and recovery processes. We saw some of his patients photos on his office walls and we asked about them especially those in their teens like Jason.
After some discussion, we decided to do an autograft instead of allograft and we felt confident about it too after hearing so much from the Dr who was very willing to share his knowledge with us; eg he even took us through what he would be doing during the operation like the holes he has to drill and how the hamstring ligaments are introduced into the knee.
Importantly, Dr is able to operate on Jason's knee the coming Saturday afternoon, 17 Sep 2011.
So we agreed on it and I cancelled the early surgery that was to be scheduled in 2 weeks' time.
No comments:
Post a Comment