ACL

I think I want to research the ACL. From an engineering perspective, the artificial tissue being worked on that could be implanted during surgery. These tissues may reduce healing time. I also want to know why the proportion of female athletes who get ACL tears is much higher than in male athletes. Some claim it is the difference in the quadracep to hamstring strength ratio in the quad. Women have weaker quads than hamstrings, whereas men's quads and hamstrings are about equal in strength.

I have a pretty cool article from PubMed Plus about an artificial ligament involving scaffolding that could be used in ACL reconstruction.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TWB-4CVV79T-1&_user=489256&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000022721&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=489256&md5=c3c3a23aced81c1196f3f38ac03280ae

You may have to be on the PennNetwork to read the article. It's abstract is relatively interesting. It really explains how many people are getting this debilitating injury. The article describes the overall situation as well as the specific designs of the tissue scaffolding. I do not know if the topic is too specific or not but we'll go over it tomorrow. To make it more broad I could go into all the articificial knee carilage and ligaments being developed.

If I pick this as my final topic, it will be pretty personal for me knowing what I have been through and the number of people I know who have endured the same thing. One second led to essentially one year of rehabilitation.

Some questions I have are

1. How does it work?
2. Why is it important?
3. When will it be used in the US as a standard method of treatment?
   

http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BI108/BI108_2004_Groups/Group06/Group6project/Graphics/Therapy/ACL_tear.jpg