Valley View’s Return to Sports: A one-of-a-kind program for ACL injury recovery

ACL injury. If it hasn’t happened to you, it’s impacted someone you know. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is primarily responsible for stabilizing knee rotation. Damage to this crucial ligament affects all types of athletes, from the casual recreationalist to elite Olympians. When surgery is warranted, Valley View’s Return to Sports program is one-of-a-kind in Colorado, aiming to get patients literally up and running as safely, swiftly and consciously as possible.

Valley View Rehabilitation Services manager and physical therapist, Adam Kliebert, was instrumental in the creation of the Return to Sports program in 2021 with ValleyOrtho providers. The program innovated a method of early baseline strength and agility testing to create more accurate recovery goals after ACL repair. These goals guide an ACL patient’s physical therapy plan and create tangible data to inform physical therapists when a patient is ready to return to pre-surgery physical activity levels. Under this program, these metrics are captured earlier than any other program locally or in the state, according to Kliebert, which is key for sustainable recovery.

Kliebert says the default method of clearing a patient to pre-surgical activity levels was to compare the strength and agility of the repaired leg to the uninjured leg between 6-12 months post-surgery. “That method doesn’t consider that the patients’ activity level was likely the lowest ever in their lives,” he says.

Kliebert said that data from about 100 patients showed that the quadricep of the healthy leg often sustained a 30-40 percent loss of strength three months after the injury due to inactivity. This stresses the urgency of testing as close to ACL damage as possible, raising the strength goal for recovery and making it less likely the knee will be re-injured.

“We now collect baseline data as close to injury time as possible,” he says. “This is pre-surgical. And through this We set a higher standard of recovery.”

The Return to Sports program, which is available to every ACL patient at ValleyOrtho, includes pre-operative testing and then assesses recovery at 12 weeks, six months and then as much time as necessary until the repaired knee is on par with the strength and agility of baseline for the uninjured leg. The service is part of ValleyOrtho’s surgical care, not physical therapy, so even if a patient has a limited number of therapy sessions, they can continue to strengthen their repaired knee until they meet their goal.

“We use the baseline data to direct resources of the recovery process where they are needed most to enhance the speed apatient can return to sports,” Kliebert says. He adds that perhaps it is unique to Valley View because it takes effort to coordinate. “This is at no additional cost to the patient. We make schedule adjustments and have our therapy team test patients accordingly. There is no financial benefit for us, but it’s the right thing to do for our patients.”