PCL injury: Signs, symptoms and current treatments

Intro what is a PCL injury or a tear of the posterior cruciate ligament how does this knee injury occur and what traditional and current treatments exist to help you recover quickly I'm Dr David Guyer orthopedic surgeon Sports Medicine specialist and anti-aging and regenerative medicine expert I hope you feel what can perform your best regardless of age or injury PCL tears of PCL vs ACL the knee are much less common than something like an ACL injury so ACLS we hear about all the time with sports and exercise that's a ligament in the center of your knee in front of the PCL that helps prevent your tibia from shifting out of place from under your femur and that happens when you land awkwardly from a jump when you run plant your foot to change directions and then that tibia just sort of sorts shifts out of place with the ACL torn the PCL is the ligament behind it and you can't really even see it as I'm showing you there you can kind of see it crossing the ACL you can see it in the back of the knee very well but it basically keeps I'll try to show this from the side keeps your tibia from getting shipped shifted backwards basically this is a ligament that's typically torn with a direct blow to the front of your knee maybe you are playing sports and you land on the front of your knee with your foot in a certain position and it drives that tibia directly posteriorly and ruptures that ligament now PCL injuries are PCL recovery interesting unlike ACL injuries which I've talked about before which very very very often needs surgery in active people and athletes they don't typically heal on their own some PCL injuries do heal on their own they can heal with a period of rest and a lot of work with a physical therapist strengthening the hamstrings in the back of the thigh and in the back of the knee to stabilize the knee that process depending on is it a grade one or grade two or grade three PCL tear and that's a really a matter of how much damage there is that increases the length of time but even a mild PCL injury can take weeks or sometimes months to fully recover to fully heal and to get all the strength back enough to have the stability to play sports and exercise now there's a lot of controversy with grade three PCL tears which are essentially complete PCL injuries but the trend over recent years has been more and more in athletes and active people to do surgery a PCL reconstruction to better improve the chances that heals the risk you run with a Grade Three PCL is you try to rehab it you try to let it heal without surgery and then three four months later you're still not able to do what you want your knee still doesn't feel right and then you go through the surgery and then you're looking at another six to nine maybe even 12 months to fully recover the surgery and the recovery from that surgery the sport specific recovery and all of it it's a long process anywhere from six to maybe 12 months so it's a big deal and so if you can get it to heal without surgery if it's a mild one great but if it does need surgery you should definitely do that but just know it's a lot of work it's an outpatient surgery typically but it's a lot of work and sort of patience on your part and then again a lot of work in rehab with a sports physical therapist people ask sometimes about some of the newer maybe regenerative treatments out there and can they help with something like bpc or CJC which are peptides bpc has been shown at least in animal studies maybe to help tendons and ligaments heal also maybe have a pain relief component Never As far as I'm aware been studied for PCL injuries it probably isn't going to do much to help the ligament heal on its own without surgery it may be for a mild injury it might help but may play a role in speeding recovery after the surgery same way with CJC 1295 which doesn't really affect the ligament per se but may strengthen the muscles around the knee faster to help you get back to sports and exercise and get through the early phases of rehab a little more reliably Regenerative treatments it's hard to necessarily know could a regenerative treatment like platelet-rich plasma or stem cells or exosomes speed up healing the ligament in theory yes again I'm not aware of any studies animal or human that have looked at PCL injuries and those kinds of regenerative treatments it's one of those things that makes sense from a basic science standpoint but it hasn't been studied all of those treatments I just mentioned are either considered experimental by the FDA or used off label I've recorded whole videos on all those different treatments on other videos on my video channel and I talk about that experimental or off label what that means and you know what that means for you specifically I'm not promoting those treatments I just have a ton of people that ask me about them so definitely check that out but maybe they play a role in this injury and be more I would expect in sort of the speeding the healing and speeding the recovery may not alone be enough some of those injuries like I said very often are going to need surgery especially when it's PCL plus other damage in your knee ACL meniscus tear maybe MCL all of those might increase the chance that you need surgery now I'd love to hear about your experience with your knee injury leave those in the comments below just understand I can't offer you medical advice anywhere online or in comments to videos but I do try to answer those questions in future videos make sure to subscribe to my video channel click the Bell to be notified when I release a new video and when I start a live stream like my ask Dr Guyer live shows if you have an injury or maybe hip knee shoulder or some other bone or joint pain and you want to get significantly better in the next 30 days without cortisone shots without surgery you can learn more about working with me in the description below this video thanks for watching I look forward to helping you feel look and perform better than ever