We have to make sure that we have full motion, the swelling is gone, the effects of the acute injury are gone, and most importantly that we have a really good muscle contraction. I think that if you ask 90 percent of orthopaedic surgeons they would tell you that that’s at least four to six weeks.
There is a very special patient where they’ll have an ACL and they’ll hardly even notice it. They have minimal swelling. They have good return of muscle function within one to two weeks and some surgeons will say, correctly, that that one will not pose any special problems. But you will note that they have fulfilled all the goals.
And so it’s a clinical decision when those goals are met that surgery is now safe for the patient.