Quote:
Originally Posted by The Sultan Of Smut
That's not what happens here. Timeline:
A) Fuck up your knee (pray to God you're not in a province with crappy health care).
B) Go to emergency room.
C) Get referral for specialist (during ER visit).
D) Depending on degree of tear appointment will be 48 hours - 2 weeks away.
E) Again depending on the injury surgery to be anywhere from 1 week to 2 months.
For ACL surgery an MRI is not required but rather a CT scan or even a simple xray. I had my acl repaired in my left knee and when I was living in a small city that had only two orthopedic surgeons and my wait was 1 month.
I suppose you can argue that my wait was twice as long as yours but in the interim my Doc had me fitted for a $1500 brace (also included in the package) to keep my knee together while I waited.
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Thats a reasonable timeline, but after everything I've had done with my knees, there is absolutely no way I would have anything performed without an MRI done first. A simple xray or ct scan offers very little to no detail to the depth of ligament tear and/or meniscus damage. If you had an ACL reconstruction done without an MRI you must have torn it good for the doctor to manually self assess and determine that a reconstruction was needed. Often people partially tear the ACL and need the reconstruction done, but without an MRI the doctor is unable to tell. I also had extensive meniscus damage and the doctor via the MRI was able to pinpoint the damaged area and where the pieces of broken off meniscus had gone. The orthopedic specialist that I used had an MRI machine in his office, so I was able to get it done the same day as my initial visit.
On a side note, how is your knee holding up now? I too had a custom brace made and have been able to resume competitive bball in the last few months. I had the cadaver replacement and it seems to be holding up nicely.