00:00This is the Injury Report, presented by NYU Langone Health.
00:05In today's Injury Report, we're going to get a look into Jackson Dart's long road to recovery
00:11and to be ready for the 2027 season after he gets his surgery to repair significant ligament
00:17and cartilage damage in his knee.
00:20So let's bring in Dr. Lauren E. Borowski, sports orthopedic specialist at NYU Langone.
00:27I mean, special kid, special talent.
00:30We thought he was going to do some special things for us this season, Doc,
00:34but it all ended, what, seven plays into his second game.
00:39So can you please walk us through the play?
00:42Because he gets hit high by one linebacker, and then he gets undercut low by another.
00:48So what does that do to a knee?
00:52And how do you end up with MCL, PCL, and meniscus damage, but a healthy ACL?
01:02It's all about the angles, right, and what the ligaments do.
01:05And so someone coming up from high and then someone coming low causes a bend of the knee
01:13to the side more than front and back.
01:16And so with the MCL, that's what the MCL protects us from,
01:19is that kind of side-to-side motion, the MCL and the LCL on the outside.
01:23And the ACL and PCL protect us from kind of front and back motion of the knee.
01:28So it all depends on those angles.
01:30And the medial meniscus, so there's two menisci of the knee,
01:34the medial on the inside and the lateral on the outside,
01:37and that MCL is really closely tied to that medial meniscus.
01:41And so if you injure that MCL, there's a chance that you could injure your medial meniscus.
01:46Then also how much bend and flex or how much flexion there is in the knee depends on
01:51or indicates how taut the ligament is, the ACL and the PCL, or how much slack there is.
01:59And so it all just depends on the angles, and they got them just right.
02:03A lot of the ACL injuries that we see are when someone has their foot planted and then the knee
02:08bends.
02:09So there's different angles at which the ACL is being pulled.
02:12But this one was just so that he, you know, he's lucky, and then he didn't get his ACL.
02:17But unfortunately, a lot of other things.
02:19If you had a patient come in to your office with MCL, PCL, and meniscus damage,
02:25but a healthy ACL as well, would his or her rehab and recovery be different than Jackson Dart's?
02:36It all depends on what they want to do afterwards, right?
02:39What they look like now, how healthy they are now, how healthy the tissue is in the knee now,
02:44and what they're expecting of the knee to do in the future, right?
02:47He is a 23-year-old who is going to want to play football again.
02:51He's going to be asking his knee to run and stop and cut and pivot and twist.
02:56Whereas if you have someone who's, you know, maybe in their 40s, 50s, 60s,
03:01and they want to run a marathon, they want to run a straight line, that might be fine.
03:05And we might be able to conservatively treat them without any surgery and just kind of rehab,
03:09rehab, rehab.
03:10But it all just depends on what they want to do.
