Banner - Hide this banner
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Hey tcraig1992 - sorry to hear about your injury which made me gasp out loud in quite a crowded departure lounge - that sounds excruciating. You did well not to pass out on the piste.As John says, the sutures disappear entirely. They are traces upon which new fibroblasts form and connect up to each other, anchoring your tendon through surgically drilled holes into the patella and the ends of the quads just like they used to. Although the injury was almost three months ago, a repair that is only two weeks old will still substantially be suture - the general rule of thumb seems to be about 12 weeks for the tendon fully to grow back (and absorption for sutures depends on materials, but will be something between 6 and 10 weeks). During that 12 week period your quadriceps atrophy significantly, which is why you then need another three months to build up sufficient strength to support the knee in the full range of active and eccentric extension (i.e. going down as well as up stairs). But if you put undue force through the tendon too early, you'll just re-rupture it. To make things a bit more complicated still, the fibroblasts which form the first connections are good at connecting with each other but are not usually aligned and therefore do not have as much tensile strength. On the other hand, you want to be switching those fibroblasts to the longer, weight/force-bearing ones during the period of regrowth, which is why you should engage in gentle and progressively greater movement to start the process of the tendon gliding over the knee again during those 12 weeks. But most post-operative protocols would suggest you kept it pretty immobile for 4 weeks. There is a range of opinions on this board (indeed, on this thread) and some of us are more adventurous still. But I would go for not too much movement for the first month - what you have done is more than enough as far as I am concerned for two weeks - and get ready to build up a bit more each day (1-2 degrees a day is just fine) in a couple of weeks' time. The good news is that you are not behind schedule (you may even be a tiny bit ahead). The bad news is that it is a tediously long schedule. I have been here twice now and the tedium never ceases to surprise me - though to be truthful, it all ended up going very well the first time and I am ahead of that schedule this second time. Because of the delay in your tendon repair there might be an increased risk of reduced ROM if you were to be slow off the mark in terms of rehab movement. But again, you're actually ahead of schedule compared to most of us - and being allowed 50 degrees already is at the progressive end of the experiences we have all had with our OSs and PTs. So bon courage and keep talking to us. From the sound of it, you're a lot younger than we are so you'll recover all the quicker.
