Doctor Explains J.J. McCarthy's Surgery & Recovery!

welcome Dr Morris injury experts so I wanted to discuss a topic today that just came out in the news past couple of hours about JJ McCarthy now the national award winner unfortunately suffered a significant knee injury earlier in the year in preseason and that required season ending repair of his meniscus let's step back a little bit and say what do we learn from this uh quote that he provided today here so we didn't have specifics but now we do we know where the meniscal tear was and what type of tear was so rarely do we get this type of specific information but we will take it and it's from the horse's mouth so we know it's true and legit let's look at the knee and and try to figure out why this happened what stresses caused this and how he'll potentially be in about a year when he's available to play again so we look at the knee we have lateral compartment medial compartment patellofemoral knee uh kneecap this is traditionally where we have our issues the medial compartment if you look on the side when we put any weight on it look where all the stress goes that posterior meniscus okay the back part the meniscus is this blue part now one of them is shaped like a sea the other one is shaped kind of like a moon Mo the medial is really they're both important but the medial is really important and the problem with the medial compartment is that uh uh a lot of people think they walk like this but in actuality they actually have a lot more stress so they end up putting a lot more pressure on that medial compartment and as a result that's uh why a lot of people have more wear and tear on the medial aspect of their knee whether it's MCL whether it's meniscus or whether it's car for this specific situation he suffered a medial meniscal tear here but even further he told us the type of tear it was now I'm going to show you this cool little model this is what a miniscus looks like so this is the one he suffered right here see how there's a little gash right there now you see the Red Zone the red part that is close to the periphery that's the only part of the meniscus that heals look where that radial tear is it's not near the red that would have never healed ever now I assumed that it was this type of tear this is a bucket handle this is a bad tear but he wouldn't have been able to move these usually lock catch you can't function he did this in a game and then a couple days later found out that it was bothering him so it pretty much couldn't have been a bucket handle so now we get clarity it wasn't a degenerative wear and tear it wasn't a flap tear it wasn't a longitude or horizontal tear we call them it wasn't a longitudinal tear it was a radial tear so what did the surgeon do they went in and sutured this and put it back together so when he pivots and uses he can handle that low in that medial compartment of that knee 3 to 6 months from now he'll be able to start running again cutting again and within the next six months after that he'll be able to play and he'll have no restrictions at all unfortunate injury unfortunate timing rare Insight from a player himself about the specifics of the knee injury but nonetheless uh I think he'll be fine and good to go in 2025 and we use this almost like a red shirt year where he starts learning the offense and learning the play calls and everything else but uh but nonetheless um and hopefully you found this interesting if you have any questions or comments love to hear them below thank you for tuning in take care