What is the best style/brand knee-brace for ACL?

May 13, 2007 6:31 PM

What is the best style/brand knee-brace for ACL?

I've busted my ACL playing basketball and had reconstruction a little over two years ago. Foolishly perhaps, I wish to continue to play basketball and would like to have solid ACL support. Suggestions? Recommendations? Tales of overcoming odds to win State?

posted by drinkspiller to health & fitness (4 comments total)

Busted PCL here. I thought the braces were less of a solid support, than an insurance against breaking the other one.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:48 PM on May 13, 2007

IANAD...

Did your Doc tell you that you needed one? This seems more like a psychological thing for your peace of mind.

My experience with knee ligament injuries is that the reconstruction leaves in a position where it won't need a brace.

(except, as noted by StickyCarpet, to keep you from tearing any more)
posted by toomuchpete at 7:03 PM on May 13, 2007

The brace will matter much less than conditioning your muscles properly. What you want to do is talk to a doctor and/or a rehab specialist about what exercises you should be doing to strengthen the muscles in the knee so that you can use it rigorously again.

Really, a brace won't do all that amazingly much to protect your ACL, which you likely hurt by hyperextending your knee. Unless you mean one of those braces with the hard bars that pivot at the knee - I suppose I can imagine that maybe stopping your knee from bending sideways in a medium speed person-to-person collision or something...

Still, the real thing you need to do is condition your muscles properly, and for that you should get the assistance of a specialist in the field.
posted by twiggy at 7:55 PM on May 13, 2007

Go to a good physical therapist. They will both give you exercises to strengthen the muscles around your knee, and they may recommend that you talk to an orthotist and get a CTI brace, or another kind of custom brace, to do exercise in.

A brace you get off the shelf, that is not customized for you and your specific knee, will likely not do the job, and may give you a false sense of security that could lead to further injury.

A customized brace is expensive. When you go to the ski lodge and you see all those guys wearing shorts and walking around with braces on their knees, they are showing off their expensive fancy CTI braces.
posted by jennyjenny at 10:11 AM on May 18, 2007