hey all
give u the background first. Last Monday nice 25knot day doing some kiteloops.. pushing the envelope a little bit looping lower and lower till well the kite didn't catch me. Took all the pressure in my right leg. Managed to dislocate my right knee, tore my mcl acl and damage my pcl. As well as send stress fractures up my femur and my tibia from when the bones hit each other.
Was obviously incredibly gutted thought that's more than just my season over usually for this level of trauma you are looking at a minimum of 6 to 12 months recovery and with the typical hamstring graft your knee will never be the same again.
now thanks to this wonderful artificial ligament called LARS they replaced my acl with it and i can expect to be on the water within 6 weeks.. just taking it easy then be back to a full functioning knee within 3 months never needing to wear a brace or anything.
So if your going in for a knee reconstruction ask your doctor about this LARS ist the quickest and strongest result you can get out of a knee recon.. its only fresh but ill let you know if the docs predictions are right and when i can comfortably ride again :) but for now im stocked
see you all out there real soon
ben
Be keen to hear your result. I had acl reconstruct 3 weeks ago (Traditional method) and supposed to be off the water for 9 months.
I opted to use my own body ligament as this has been proven stronger and the body accepts it better, according to the specialists. Longer rehab time though.
This would make for a good review in the gear review section. Great comparison, I'll race ya back to the water, ATM I'm 2 weeks in front 
Just wondering, h20fly - did you warm up and stretch heaps before you went kiting or not at all?
Hope you recover well.
yeh it going to be a great review not only who gets out earlier.. which probably will be me.. but also whos knee lasts longer.. if i get out in 3 months but it only last me a year i will probably opt for more traditional method next time. hows the pain now? im still in hospital on day 4 after op.. its killing me if it wasnt for oxycodon i wouldnt be a very happy boy. but i did also send stress fractures up my femur and tibia as well.. apparently that is where a lot of my pain is coming from
Hi HFly
I have met so many people now that have done this injury.
I did the same thing snowboarding last winter, dislocated my knee and broke the acl. I had the opp in September but didn't kite till Christmas. I had a combination Lars and Hamstring graft. My surgeon suggested this as I wanted to get out kite surfing again quickly. He also put the hamstring graft in because the long term durability is still a little unknown with just the Lars.
Recovery from the opp took 3 months till I had enough movement to go kite surfing and there is still not the strength in my leg 15 months on.
You will have full strength in the joint the day of the opp, but the recovery from the opp takes time. you will hardly be able to move your knee at all for the first few weeks. What the surgeons don't tell you is that it will totally muck up you balance on that leg and you will have to do lots of physio to build this back up.
I took up long board surfing again last year just to help with my balance.
I think having a bit of the hamstring shaved has weakened the muscles.
In my experience kite surfing after 3 months is possible but you have nowhere near the strength or movement in you leg. It will feel really stiff and week when you first go out and don't go too hard cos you cant bend your legs properly to absorb the landings.
I have given up kite loops now as landing hard and fast still tweaks my knee and there are plenty of other new tricks to learn.
Good luck with your opp. Who is your surgeon?
Take it easy on the road to recovery!!
I ripped my MCL off the bone and ruptured my PCL and had fractures top and bottom. No op as ACL ok. MCL and PCL ops do not have a good success rate. 4 months along I can kite but the knee feels weak and loose. You might not get that with them putting a new ACL in.
I went too early and reinjured the knee put me right back. Lesson learned.
Good luck, do the hard work in rehab and it will benefit you.
im so dedicated to the rehab thankfully my other proffesion personal training has given me a bit of back ground knowledge on knee rehabilitation. and i intend to work hard at it
i was lucky my acl was still in really good condition so he managed to just use the acl and splice it all the way through the LARS ligament hopefully meaning that on recovery it should just use the LARS as a splint almost while it grows and regains its strength.
i really dont want to give up kiteloops they give me so much joy.. but i will be taking it easy and giving this knee all the time it needs if i can just get back out in the waves in a couple of months ill be happy and just move up from there..
But you guys are right already had the op last friday and i cant believe the pain i am in .. i cant even remotely flex my knee i think i would actually be more comfortable in the richard splint but surgeon, dr tranastic wants me to just use a brace for the moment so i do get it movng a bit.. but man i cant even go to the shower with out rithling in pain
Ye good luck with the rehab. Get a good physio, one that understands what a Lars ligament is, ask them if they have had experience with acl recovery using the lars. cos Lars are new to OZ not many have. I went through quite a few till I found one that would go at the pace I wanted. If they are not familiar with the Lars ligament they will pace your recovery out over 1 year, but like me you will want this done within a couple of months.
Once you start kite surfing again, get a big tube of Voltaren, it will be your best friend.
Power Physio. 734 Karrinyup Rd. There All girls there with strong hands, and they seem to know what there doing.
See you at kitestock then. BTW a mate of mine broke his ACL at kitestock 3 years ago. It is a common injury
I hear and feel all your pain - did my knee 5 weeks ago. Stretched ACL and MCL (already damaged from rugby union) and broke my tibia. No surgery yet, although knee feeling very unstable so santa may still be delivering me an operation for christmas. Interested in hearing about hamstring vs artificial recovery time - watching the guys having so much fun enough to make you cry, and 9 to 12 months is a LONG TIME (people get less for glassings in this place!)
Wish you guys a speedy recovery and back doing stupid things soon!
Note: My ACL was completely severed.
I was out of hospital the next day, with ability to walk with crutches and get around applying most of my weight on that leg (braced of course). After the first week I could get approx 40deg movement unassisted while doing excercises. 2nd week started to walk with brace on and sometimes no crutches. Could bend unassisted a little further prob close to 70 deg. Now Im just heading into my 4th week and I can bend beyond 90deg with little pain.
I can now start to straighten and tense my withered quad and can do basic unweighted hamstring curls to 90deg only.
I didnt have that much pain like you guys have mentioned. I took one neurofen each day to help control the swelling and iced when I could.
I start physio this week.
Good luck with Recon Ben
i assist Mr Ben Hewitt at Perth orthopaedics on occasions and have done quite a few LARS with him. He was one of the first in Perth to do them and has a lot of experience with them.
Generally they are done with a hamstring graft threaded within the LARS or if a good ACL stump is present [they usually tear off at the top] then the Lars can be threaded up through the old ACL and used to reattach it. That way you have a LARS plus natural ligament material in place. That part is a very delicate procedure and quite 'operator dependent' but it is how I would want my reconstruction to be done if it came to it
What has been experienced in the past is that purely artificial grafts always fail so jut hacking out the original ACL and sticking in a LARS is not a long term solution. Ben Hewitts methods aim to give the early rehabilitation advantages of the LARS but with the long term outcome of pure patellar tendon or hamstring grafts.
The down side is the 4000 dollar cost of a LARS [and the funds dont cover it i believe] and the lack of long term data.
Good luck with the Recos guys,had mine done 2 1/2 years ago and was kiting again after 6 months..
I found the mental part of the injury harder to get over then the physical part..
That sound of your knee popping is always in the back of your head and took along time to get over!!!
Anyone had a recon done in Sydney NSW recently, can you recommend a surgeon? My specialist has literally told me to wear brace for 4 weeks and physio for another 4 weeks before looking at recon..... but I want to just have it done like tomorrow. How long did you have to wait before getting in for surgery??? (someone told me joint needs time for swelling to go down before should consider recon, does that sound right?)
hey just an update on the lars. :) its been 11 days ive been off crutches for 3 days now... ive got probably about 70 degrees of flexion and almost full extension. not much pain at all. Its awsome im driving im getting about slowly getting my life back. cant wait for kitestock :)
But a genuine warning be very careful with oxycodon. I think i genuinely have a physical dependency on it. I literally cant sleep more than 2 hours with out it .. im always just feeling on edge. trying to slowly ween myself off by just taking half at night but still haven't been able to stop having that half for about 4 days now grr
Hi Ben
I heard the news the other day when I went in to pick up the new harness (which works really well for me).
Reading these comments makes this 'sport' sound like a disaster zone.
I'm only in it for the cruising and hope these type of injuries are limited to the specky tricks dept!
Anyway, thanks for your help and hope you get well soon.
Cheers
Russell
(p.s. I'm making slow progress...)
Yikes, that's a lot of busted knees! I had a close call last March but in the end it was not bad enough a tear/strain to warrant surgery. Still, despite doing lots of cycling and squats and other stuff through winter it's only now feeling above 80%.
Connective tissue just takes ages to heal, and longer as you get older. I consider myself a very healthy and fit 36 year old but still there's a significant difference in healing times now compared to when I was 20.
Interestingly, I see very few other kiters do much of a warm up at all. Just taking your arms, legs and torso through their full range of motion (without forcing) a few times helps a lot. It's partly about increased flow of fluids to muscles and joints, but also about reminding your system where the joints are and the movement pathways that you'd like to activate once on the water.
I've gone as far as spending a bit of time doing squats and lunges while actually standing on my board, feet in straps, on land, just to check my strap placement for different scenarios and rehearse at lower speeds the movements that I want to be automatic at high speeds. This has helped a lot and definitely saved me from a harder and faster than planned landing a few weeks ago.
When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not, warm up!
Hi just thought I would add my two cents,
I was fortunate enough to watch a fair few knee operations (amongst others) at St. John of God (Murdoch) with a hip and knee expert orthopedic surgeon. I had quite a lengthy discussion with him about the different types of grafts and basically he said the hamstring graft was a much better graft long term and tends to avoid the LARS technique unless in the elite athlete population where quick recovery is vital.
The reasoning he gave me is that unlike the tendon harvested from your hamstrings (there are a few different places they can get it from btw) the artificial graft used in LARS is a lot stronger than the ACL is normally and in fact is actually stronger that the bone it is anchored to and as such creates and erosion type effect and apparently a lot of the footballers getting them done go get it redone with the hamstring after their career is done because of the increased rate of degeneration of the knee and deterioration of the graft. This is not to say that the LARS is a bad technique just that all the techniques have their pro's and con's. I am interested to hear about the technique using the existing ACL stump Niall, I would have thought that would be weaker than a hamstring/patellar autograph? Is there any data out there for the tensile strength of that technique?
It will be interesting to hear how it turns out long term, respecting the graft you have and being diligent with rehab and continuing to look after the knee years down the track will hopefully keep you out of having further problems.
