Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

90° bracing means a kneeling skate or rest.

Non use of the leg will mean significant loss of muscle tone. I had a meniscus tear and it was 8+ months of continual physio and exercise to get back to usably "normal" and I continue to do targeted exercises. My physio can still see clear differences in the leg sizes.

Probably unavoidable with ACL tear anyway.

View on HN

Electrical stimulation might help prevent atrophy while waiting to see if the bracing works.

Or after some window, maybe exercise of the muscles within the allowed loading and movement range.

This study details the protocol used, which has patients brace-free and fully weight-bearing at 15 weeks. There are exercises to minimize muscle wasting but yeah, some is unavoidable.

That’s probably going to differ between individuals quite a bit. I had a pretty bad broken leg, and could barely use it at all for nearly 4 months. There was a noticeable size difference after the bone had healed, but normal function wasn’t really impaired, and it was only a couple months more until I was training like normal again.

ACL surgery is much worse

For muscle loss? Doubt it. SIL was doing exercises the day after her surgery. With a 90 degree cast, no exercise can be done on the many of the muscles.

I lost my medialis quad activation completely for 6 weeks after ACLR surgery. It took 6 months of PT to get my patella to track straight afterwards, and it still isn't quite right.

After being in a cast when I was 13 for 6 months, I lost quad size that I never regained, even after 40 years of trying. You can easily see the difference with the eye.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com