A PT’s Journey Back From ACL Surgery Utilizing Force Plates

As a physical therapist and skier, my worst fear was a knee injury. This became a reality for me back in January when I tore my left ACL, as well as my medial/lateral meniscus. I opted to wait 2 months to have surgery and went with a patellar tendon graft.  

Arthroscopic image from 3/19/24  

I work closely with many patients following orthopedic knee surgeries and have been lucky to utilize force plates and isometric devices to help guide intervention and return to sport decision-making. During my own recovery process I was also fortunate to have baseline metrics to compare to post-operatively. Through a series of blogs, I will share my journey and the various tests/measures you may want to look at.  

Being intimately familiar with the rehab process, I thought I would be able to rehab efficiently, recover quickly, and be back to jogging right around the 16-week mark.  I was weight bearing as tolerated from the get-go and overly optimistic that I could progress through my recovery with ease. Although my test results told me otherwise.

One of my favorite utilizations of the force plates early on was looking at standing weight-bearing symmetry and moving towards unweighted and weighted squat symmetry within the Free Run test. The plates are a great training tool to use for biofeedback to help improve weight bearing or squat symmetry and provide patients with real-time results. 

It was amazing how great I felt 4 days pre-operatively. I decided to test my squat symmetry unweighted and had an L/R average symmetry of 0.11% in favor of my R side (non-injured). As you can see, the force tracings are fairly symmetrical and follow the same shape.

3/13/2024

For the first few weeks after my surgery, I was dealing with expected stiffness, swelling, and pain. Below is my first squat test post-op with an L/R average symmetry of -11.13% in favor of my R leg completed 4 weeks post-op, but without any uniformity in my tracing. 

4/16/2024

My week 8 test looked slightly better than my week 4 test, however, it was not notable enough to share. At week 12, I was still dealing with mild to moderate achy discomfort in my left patellar tendon and patellofemoral joint, but my force plate squat data started to look cleaner. The force tracings were more symmetrical, and I had an L/R average symmetry of -6.3% in favor of my R knee. 

6/16/2024

My main takeaways as a clinician and patient are you can’t cheat the force plates, and these tools are readily available to help qualify and quantify outcomes. I knew exactly what the plates were testing, and that I needed to place considerably more weight on my left side to look symmetrical, and yet the tracing was still way off. For my next blog, we will look at my first CMJ following surgery.