There are some things that are so second nature about my job that I don’t even think about them. For example, when I do ACL surgery, I typically use a graft. This means I take a tendon and configure it to reconstruct a ligament.
This method of doing ACL surgery has been commonplace in orthopaedics for over 40 years—but to a layperson, it sounds kind of crazy. My 23-year-old daughter, who is a law student, recently was talking to a friend who told her that they “took his quad” to make a new ACL. My daughter thought this was outlandish. Why on earth would they do this?
I feel like I talk about work all the time at home, but clearly, there is a lot that I have never mentioned! Here are a few other examples:
- Elbow surgeons use a small tendon in the forearm for Tommy John Surgery (also known as ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction) and for medial collateral ligament (MCL) of the elbow reconstruction
- Foot and ankle surgeons use a small tendon in the calf or foot to repair ligaments and tendons in the foot
- Knee surgeons like me use hamstrings, quads, and sometimes the patellar tendon to reconstruct the ACL, MCL (of the knee, of course), and occasionally other ligaments and tendons in the knee.
It’s lucky that we have some expendable tendons in our body that can be used to make repairs!
Photo by Marcus Wallis on Unsplash.