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Virginia Tech Uses Computerized Knee Brace for Rehab
jimCATDOG writes: "College running back Lee Suggs was injured in VT's first football game, requiring knee surgery and the rest of the season off. VT cares about having the Big East's most prolific scorer healthy. The cool part is that they are using a computerized knee brace to help bring him back to full speed." As the tools available to medical rehabilition improve, what other advances can we expect in the near future?
someone is going to it, so i will get it out of the way. will it make me "better, stronger, faster?" does it cost $6,000,000? when i jump will it go neh neh neh neh neh neh neh neh neh neh neh neh neh? can i work for oscar goldman when it's all over? thanks, good night everyone.
Don't be in a hurry, this will take time. How long depends on what kind of surgery you need. Orthoscopic is the least damaging, but any surgery pretty much knocks out your quads and weakens your calf for many weeks. Age and physical condition going into surgery should make a difference. I was 38 when I had mine, and had been riding only about 80 miles/week prior to the injury (I was a grad student, not racing, but riding for fitness). In my twenties I was a cat 2, training about 300 miles per week. So although I didn't return to racing following surgery, my experience may at least give you some idea what you're in for.
After a crash on campus (slipped on an oil patch), I had orthroscopic surgery on my right knee for what the surgeon thought was a torn ACL.. Turned out the ACL was intact, but there was meniscus damage and "a lot of junk and blood in there" that needed to be cleaned up, said the surgeon. I was on crutches for about a week. I used a knee brace for about 9 weeks, during which I was doing physical therapy that included electro-stimulus, stretching, weights, stationary bike, and work with a computerized resistance machine. I was using a turbo trainer 3x a week after two weeks, and was doing short road rides after about a month. Still, even with continued physical therapy and riding, it was a good 3 months before my knee was feeling stable enough, and my quads strong enough, for extended out of the saddle efforts. (I should mention I was off the bike between week 10 and 13 while doing field work in Panama, during which I was hiking up and down hills in the rainforest, so I was still getting a work out.) After 6 months, my leg felt about 85% recovered. 90% after 8 mos. 100% at 12 mos.
If you're younger and have been training, you'll probably recover faster. But my guess is it will still take months to get back to pre-surgery form.
I found a link to another description of the brace here. It seems like a pretty cool little toy for doing this sort of rehab. I'd much rather have this than a woman yelling at my face that I can lift my leg, I just have to try harder.
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It is not motorized as such. It does limit physical motion to prevent injury.
Otherwise, it is basically a fancy peripheral to a monitor which collects appropriate bio data.
Very useful for rehab, of course, but surprising that someone hadn't come up with something like this before? Or has this been around, and we just never noticed?
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As far as actual healing, football has done much for patients of knee problems, as teams and athletes alike are determined to keep valuable players in the game, where a torn ligament decades ago was a career ending injury.
Currently I'm planning to have some knee work done, due to calcification of the anterior of the patella (I put my knee through ice at 11 and created microfractures which healed like sand paper, can hurt like the dickens) something like what Suggs is outfitted with might assist in my recovery program, but it still doesn't cause it to heal faster or tell where healing is at, that's still up to mother nature.
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