Terrell Thomas May Have a Long Road Back From Recovery

In an interview with the NY Post Dr. Jonathan Glashow, he says that because Terrell Thomas has had a previous ACL injury he’s less likely to come back healthy. This is something that I did not know.

Terrell Thomas faces a more arduous journey back to playing high-level cornerback for the Giants than most torn ACL patients because his is a repeat injury in his right knee.

Thomas first tore his right anterior cruciate ligament in 2005 while playing for USC.

“Revision surgery is notoriously less successful,” Dr. Jonathan Glashow, an orthopedic surgeon and co-chief of Sports Medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, told The Post yesterday. “The ACL that’s in there, people think we actually fix; we don’t,” Dr. Glashow said. “You get a new piece of tissue.”

The doctor goes on to talk about where the tissue will come from and you can read the article to learn a little bit more about what happens with the A.C.L. injury. I wonder if General Managers and front offices know that a repeat A.C.L. injury makes it less likely that a player will be able to return to the football field and if that’d effect draft status even more for players who have had one ACL injury before. The repeat offenders still have a relatively high success rate of returning (75%), but it is 10 to 15 percent less likely to have a positive result for an ACL tear that occurs twice.

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