04-11-2017, 06:55 PM
(04-11-2017, 06:16 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Once again, you are talking about Joe Fan. Professional athletes don't take 1-2 weeks to schedule surgery, and 1-2 weeks to let swelling go down is an absurd number for a person with a professional training staff on call. So sure, if you take the very maximum of the non-surgical wait, and then add in 4 more weeks of imaginary time, it totally fits the timeframe.
The NFL has a 5 month offseason (if you don't count minicamps/voluntary workouts/etc). Joe Fan can afford to wait 3 months to 100% make sure non-surgery works. Professional athletes need to get themselves ready for the start of the season. How do they not take an MRI say.. 1 month, or even 2 months into it and say "Well shit, it's not healing"?
There's no scenario where it should take 4 months of offseason to get surgery for an NFL player, regardless of how you try to defend it.
I'm talking about patients with a grade III ankle sprain of the anteriolateral fibular ligament. If surgery doesn't improve the outcome then surgery doesn't improve the outcome. Doesn't matter if you're Joe Fan or Tyler Eifert.
If an injury can heal on it's on, usually does in the majority of patients, and surgery doesn't improve the outcome compared to nonsurgical treatment then you and your surgeon would be idiots to rush into surgery.
Now why would a surgeon rush into a surgery if that surgery doesn't improve the outcome? (Except to pay off his wife's Mercedes Benz?)
Let's say you're Eifert and I'm his surgeon:
Me: You tore an ankle ligament. We can treat it one of three ways:
1 Surgery-it doesn't guarantee a better outcome, but you might be able to return to play sooner. But, there are no guarantees with any surgery, the is the risk of infection like MRSA, rare reactions like malignant hyperthermia which could kill you, bleeding out, permanent nerve damage, etc, etc, yada, yada, yada.
2 A boot and rehab, works just as well as surgery, most injuries like yours heal without surgery, if everything goes according to plan you're back out on the field same time frame as surgery, possibly sooner.
3 A combination of 1 and 2. We can treat you with the boot and rehab and if the injury doesn't heal as most do we can perform the surgery in 2-3 months. Downside, takes longer and you may miss the start of the season
So what do you want to do?
Obviously, Eifert chose option 3.
Also, some people get arthroscopic surgery because MRIs can miss a ligament or cartilage tear. Some people have arthroscopic surgery because the MRI showed a tear, but when the orthopedist was inside the joint there wasn't a tear.
I'm not defending anything. I'm giving you the benefit of my knowledge and experience which is how I knew Eifert tore a ligament 11 months ago while Hobson was reporting a sprain.
