Dieselbound&Down wrote:Why do you think doctors are in the business of preventing future injury without any other context.
They are in the business of advising patients to do things based on the context given. For example:
Hey doc, how can I best avoid dying by crashing into the ground at free fall speed?
answer - don't go skydiving.
Hey doc, how can I best avoid dying from crashing into the ground at free fall speed given that I want to, and feel ready, to sky dive again?
answer - wear a helmet
Often times, the desire and comfort level of the patient is assumed and taken for granted, so the context isn't really dealt with. Like people with infections are assumed to want to be infection free, and people who cannot walk after an accident are assumed to want to walk. But it's NOT assumed that people who fear injury WANT to play. And doctors don't recommend things in contexts other than what exists. If Rose doesn't want to play.. which he doesn't (net), I doubt any doctor will recommend that he play. Oh, oh, but how will he ever play again? Well, the doctors don't (or shouldn't) care if he ever plays again. They're not giving him life or financial advise.
Sure, tell him to never leave the house. But that has nothing to do with this conversation since Rose plays basketball and the goal is not to avoid any chance of reinjury but rather to get him back to peak physical form.
And I think it is relevant that doctors haven't flagged it for 2 reasons. (1) I haven't seen anything to show that doctors have a particular fear that athletes coming off an ACL repair have a higher risk of injury to the knee or other lower body parts. There *may* be a higher risk but this hasn't been proven and isn't a strong enough issue that doctors have tried to get it studied. (2) There are none of these studies or literature to read. For Rose to come up with the conclusion you expressed, Rose would have to do significant research on his own time into case histories of people coming off ACL surgeries and be looking for a pattern the doctors who do this daily are themselves missing. Why do you believe Rose is the Erin Brokovich of orthopedics? He may or may not have taken the ACT and he has 1 semester of college. He's a basketball player not a medical researcher.
You CAN'T study these types of things very well. Why? Because the variation in tissue condition among athletes is FAR smaller than the variation in mechanism of injury. The different mechanisms possible to reinjury a player are infinite. No two are the same. You can't hold mechanism constant and then see how injury rate differs for guys who tore ACLs vs guys who didn't.