
With the ever-increasing number of older people in our country, its not surprising that more and more Americans are dealing with arthritic conditions in their knees and other joints. Although there are several things that can be done to delay the need for knee replacement surgery, traditionally, once the decision has been made to replace one or both of a patient’s knees — which happens more than 600,000 times per year nationwide (according to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality) — the only ways to perform knee replacement surgery previously was to remove either the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in that knee, or both the ACL and the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), even if the ACL, in particular, was still a relatively healthy ligament.