On each of these mini episodes, we chat about a new article or new surgical technique in the field of sports medicine. We’ll give you our quick take on the most recent data and how this data will be impacting our practice.

Today, we’re talking about graft choice for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, and specifically how that impacts psychological readiness to return to play. Now, we’ve spoken extensively about ACL injury on this podcast.

On our first ever episode with Dr. Mary Mulcahey was two-part segment all about ACL tears. Since then, we have gone on to discuss risks factors for ACL tears, ACL reconstruction, augmentation with lateral extra-articular tenodesis, revision ACL surgery and more! We also did an entire Game Plan episode on ACL graft choice and an Overtime episode “update” on ACL graft choice – the latter is episode #81 if you want to check it out.

We also touched upon psychological readiness to return to play after ACL reconstruction in episode #16. Musculoskeletal injuries, in particular ACL injuries, can take a tremendous psychological toll on our athletes. Depression, a common experience for injured athletes, has been associated with worse patient- reported outcomes, higher levels of pain, and increased rates of postop complications.

Unfortunately, caring for the mental side of the injured athlete remains a huge gap in our field of orthopedics and sports medicine. For this reason, Catherine and her colleague Emily Perrin created The Unbroken Athlete – a resource containing comprehensive mental and physical programs for athletes to enhance their recovery journey and performance. Catherine will speak a bit more about this during the episode.

Our paper today is titled “Association Between Autograft Choice and Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport After ACL Reconstruction.” This level 3 retrospective cohort study was performed at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. It sought to evaluate the relationship between an athlete psychological readiness to return to sport, as defined by the ACL-RSI score, and autograft choice – either quadriceps tendon, hamstring tendon or bone-patellar-tendon-bone.