Is surgery always needed for an ACL tear?

Full ACL tears cannot heal on their own. These tears almost always need to be treated surgically, typically using a minimally invasive approach called arthroscopy. Sometime the initial injury settles and the swelling goes away and hence pain disappears. You can do your routine activity easily. But your ACL is still damaged, and your knee is still moving abnormally which will lead to damage to meniscus, cartilage and other ligaments, which can lead to early osteoarthritis

Most national and international players are very smart. Once they have an ACL injury they realize that this will lead to impact on their performance or inability to play and they immediately come to us for an ACL surgery. Your recovery starts the day your ACL is fixed and it’s your path back to your career or sport.

Low grade partial tears can be treated conservatively and with injections of PRP or stem cells to help healing. High grade partial tears in the past used to be treated the same but many patients had progression on injury. Now we aggressively deal with these injuries through ACL repair or reconstruction