Medial collateral ligament (MCL) tears often occur from soccer, skiing, or football and involve the joint being bent to the side, tearing the ligament that exists just inside the soft tissue of the knee. The MCL usually tears partially and is often graded as a Grade 1, 2 or 3 type of tear. Fortunately, the MCL has a very good blood supply. By protecting and rehabilitating it early with gentle range-of-motion exercises, soft tissue massage, and specific strengthening exercises, the tissue can be induced to heal in a relatively normal pattern with collagen fibers aligned along the normal pathway of the original MCL.

Surgical repair of the MCL, in our opinion, is infrequently needed because the MCL will often heal. Occasionally, MCL injuries lead to chronic instability and in those cases, we rebuild the MCL typically using an allograft or donor tissue to augment the suture repair of the ligament itself.

The rehabilitation of the MCL injury is very specific and must be initiated immediately after the injury. Of note, we no longer use nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory medications after ligament injuries due to their proven complication of interfering with collagen deposition in normal ligament pattern healing.