Part of ACL reconstruction rehab

ACL surgery recovery timeline: the stages, and what moves you on

An ACL surgery recovery timeline is easier to use as four stages than as a set of dates, because you move through the stages when the knee is ready rather than when the calendar reaches a week number. The whole thing is long. The van Melick guideline advises that rehab carries on for 9 to 12 months after surgery, and the NHS says most people can do most activities again within a few months, but that it can take up to a year to play sport again. Rough bands do exist, and each one has its own source. The Aspetar guideline groups the evidence into very early (the first month), early (1 to 2 months), intermediate (2 to 4 months) and advanced (after 4 months). The NHS says to go back to work when you feel ready, usually after about 4 to 6 weeks depending on the job. In one review of 201 studies of first runs, the middle value was about 12 weeks, with a spread from 5 to 39 weeks, so 12 weeks is the middle of a wide range of protocols rather than a healing threshold. OrthoInfo describes most people being allowed back to full sport within 6 to 12 months, depending on their progress, strength and movement. None of those figures is your date, and they do not all come from the same kind of evidence. Your own surgeon's protocol comes before any chart, this one included, because the graft that was used and any meniscus or cartilage repair done in the same operation change what the leg may do and when.

Warning signs, and when to get help

What does an ACL surgery recovery timeline actually look like?

Four stages, each with a wide band of dates attached to it and a set of goals that decide when you move on. That is how the guidelines describe it, and it is why two people operated on in the same week can be in different stages a month later.

The Aspetar guideline groups the evidence into four rough time bands: very early, the first month after surgery; early, 1 to 2 months; intermediate, 2 to 4 months; and advanced, after 4 months (Kotsifaki and colleagues, 2023). The van Melick guideline, written for the Royal Dutch Society for Physical Therapy, describes a phase before surgery and three after it, and advises that rehab carries on for 9 to 12 months, with strength, hop, movement quality and psychological tests used to decide when to progress (van Melick and colleagues, 2016). The four stages of the main ACL reconstruction rehab program follow those bands loosely, and the exercises in each one are set out in ACL rehab exercises by phase.

The week numbers below come with a caveat. The Aspetar guideline rated the certainty of the evidence as very low for most parts of rehab after this operation, and most of its recommendations rest on agreement between experienced clinicians rather than on trials. So the bands are the best description available of what teams actually do, not a tested schedule.

Stage 1: Settle the swelling, straighten the knee and switch on the thigh

Roughly the first weeks, inside whatever limits your team set for weight bearing, bending and a brace. The three aims are a knee that straightens as fully as the other one, a thigh muscle that switches on again, and less swelling.

The NHS gives plain advice for this stage: keep your leg raised when you rest, hold an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel on the knee for 15 to 20 minutes every 2 to 3 hours but not if the skin there is numb, keep the wound dry, take the painkillers you were prescribed, and do not put a pillow under your knee when you rest.

There is one exception to raising the leg. If your toes are numb, tingling or burning, or the cast or boot feels tight, do not prop the foot higher than your hip and do not put ice on it, and read the warning signs below for what to do instead. The same exception applies to a brace or a bandage. If the foot beyond the bandage is numb, tingling or burning, if a brace or a bandage on the leg feels tight, or if the leg is getting tighter and more painful, loosen the straps or take the bandage off, keep the leg at about heart level rather than higher, leave the ice off, and read the warning signs below for what to do instead. Do not try to take a plaster cast off yourself. After an operation, the layer to take off is the outer bandage or wrap, along with any brace strap that is squeezing the leg, not the dressing stuck over the wound itself, which stays on and stays dry. Do not wait to get through to your team first: take the pressure off, then call emergency services straight away, and do not drive yourself.

The NHS also says to use crutches and a brace only as your surgeon or physio told you, and to stop the crutches when your physiotherapist says so. The Aspetar guideline supports putting weight through the leg from the first week, built up in a controlled way, and OrthoInfo notes that how much weight you are allowed depends on your surgeon and on any other injuries treated in the same operation.

The work itself is small and frequent at this stage. Seated heel prop uses the weight of the leg to ease the knee straight, quad sets wake the thigh up, and heel slides bring bending back as far as your plan allows. A stretching feeling, stiffness or a mild ache that settles soon after you finish is expected. Sharp pain, pain that builds with every repetition, or a knee that is clearly more swollen the next morning means the session asked too much, so drop back a step rather than stopping altogether, and tell your physio.

What usually changes here is the swelling and the straightening, not the strength. People who expect to feel strong in the first month read the timeline as a failure when it is running normally.

Stage 2: Walk normally and build strength on two legs

This one starts when your knee straightens fully, the swelling is settling and your team says you can take your full weight. In the Aspetar bands it sits around the 1 to 2 month mark, although the trigger is the knee rather than the month.

Strength work begins with both feet on the ground, and terminal knee extension works the last part of straightening, which is the part that tends to be missing. If a meniscus was repaired in the same operation, ask your surgeon or physio how deep you may squat before you start, as that limit is usually tighter and lasts longer than the one on walking, and stay inside a right angle while you wait for their answer.

By the end of this stage you should be walking without crutches and without a limp. The limp is the part people miss, because almost nobody can feel their own. A short step on the operated side, with the knee staying a little bent through the middle of the stride, can carry on for weeks after the crutches go, and filming yourself walking from the side is how it gets found.

Two everyday questions usually land here. The NHS says to go back to work when you feel ready, usually after about 4 to 6 weeks depending on the job, and that you should not drive until your medical team says you are fit to drive.

Stage 3: Strength and control on one leg

This starts when you walk without a limp, stage 2 feels easy and the knee is no worse the next morning. It maps loosely onto the Aspetar intermediate band of 2 to 4 months, and it is the longest unglamorous stretch of the whole recovery.

It is also where the timeline and the feeling part company. The knee is usually comfortable for walking around by now, so sessions start getting skipped, while the leg is nowhere near ready for sport. Single leg strength is the thing being built, and it comes back long after walking, stairs up and stairs down.

After a hamstring graft, resisted hamstring work waits longer than the rest of this stage. A scoping review of the published ACL rehabilitation guidelines found that some of the guidelines carrying hamstring graft advice hold flexor strengthening back for the first 6 to 8 weeks, start isometric knee bending no earlier than week 6 and resisted knee bending no earlier than week 8 (Briem and colleagues, 2026). Reading that same chart, a narrative review of what hamstring harvest does to the tendon treats dynamic loading as something to avoid in the first 4 weeks, unsettled between 4 and 12 weeks, and recommended after 12 (Högberg and colleagues, 2026, reading Briem and colleagues, 2026). So unless your own team has given you an earlier date, treat 12 weeks as the point where weight gets added. If you get a sudden sharp pain at the back of the thigh while loading it, stop and tell your surgeon or physio, because loading the harvest site too hard in the first 3 to 4 weeks has been reported to tear the healing tendon, which may then not grow back (Högberg and colleagues, 2026).

Stage 4: Get ready to run, jump and change direction

This stage starts only when your physio has tested the knee and says you are ready, which in most programs is at least about 3 months after surgery. After a hamstring graft or a quadriceps tendon graft, the hopping and jumping inside this stage wait until at least 16 weeks after surgery unless your surgeon or physio has cleared them earlier, because what is still rebuilding is the place the tendon was taken from rather than the new ligament (Briem and colleagues, 2026). If a meniscus or cartilage was repaired in the same operation, get your surgeon's go-ahead before any hopping, landing or twisting, and before any deep or loaded bending such as a full squat, a lunge or kneeling, because those limits often run for months after a repair and are lifted later than the ones on walking.

Running has the best described minimum of anything on this page, and it is still not a date for you. In a scoping review of 201 studies, the time-based criteria for a first run had a median of about 12 weeks, with a range from 5 to 39 weeks, and fewer than one in five of those studies added any clinical, strength or performance criterion at all (Rambaud and colleagues, 2018). The criteria that matter, and how the first runs are built, are in ACL return to running.

Sport sits further out again. OrthoInfo describes most people being allowed back to full sport within 6 to 12 months, depending on their progress, strength and movement. In a study of 106 people who played pivoting sports, the rate of injuring the knee again fell by about half for each month the return was delayed, up to 9 months after surgery, with no further drop after that, and people whose thigh strength was closer to the other leg had fewer reinjuries (Grindem and colleagues, 2016). What that decision is actually made on is set out in ACL return to sport testing, and what the risk looks like afterward is in preventing a second ACL injury.

Am I behind if I am not where the chart says?

Usually not, and the question itself is the wrong shape. Every chart you can find, ours included, describes a group of people with mixed grafts, mixed concurrent repairs and mixed starting points. Your stage is decided by what the knee can do, not by what week it is.

Those groups were also adults: the review behind the running figure only accepted studies of adults after a first reconstruction, and the sport figures come from adult cohorts, so no week number here is a timetable for a growing knee. This page is for adults. A child or teenager who has had ACL surgery should follow the plan from their surgeon and physio, and ask them before trying any exercise on this page.

Check three things instead of the date. Does the knee straighten as fully as the other one. Is it no more swollen the morning after a session. Can you walk without a limp when nobody is watching. A knee that passes those is progressing whatever the week number says, and one that fails them at 8 weeks is not fixed by moving on to the next stage anyway.

There is one pattern that is not a wait and see. A knee that is losing movement it had, or that is not straightening any further from week to week, needs your physio or surgeon within a few days rather than at the next routine appointment. A small lump of scar tissue at the front of the knee can block the last few degrees of straightening, and 250 knee surgeons across 25 countries, asked how it behaves in their own practice, put the usual time it starts causing trouble at 3 to 6 months after the operation and most of them estimated that it happens to between 1 and 5 people in every 100 (D'Ambrosi and colleagues, 2026). Those are experienced surgeons describing what they see rather than a counted rate, so use the window as a reason not to dismiss a late extension block, not as a date to wait for. The warning signs at the foot of this page give that one its own line, and the warning signs page covers the rest in more detail.

What makes one recovery slower than another?

Four things do most of it, and only one is effort.

The graft is the first. After a patellar tendon graft, pain at the front of the knee and pain when kneeling are more common (OrthoInfo). After a hamstring graft, resisted hamstring work is often held back for the first weeks while the site the tendon came from heals, although advice on timing varies and the evidence is unclear (Högberg and colleagues, 2026). What each one changes is covered in hamstring compared with patellar tendon graft.

A repair done in the same operation is the second, and it is the one that moves dates most. A meniscus tear repaired alongside the reconstruction, or cartilage work, usually means tighter limits on weight bearing and bending, and those limits are lifted later than the ones on walking.

Swelling is the third. It is the dial that decides how fast the strength work can be loaded, and a knee that keeps swelling after sessions progresses slowly whatever the plan says. A swollen knee covers what it means and what settles it.

How the thigh responds is the fourth. The quadriceps is the muscle the surgeon has to work past to reach the joint, and getting it to switch on again is the first real battle of this recovery, before bending is.

Underneath all four sits the graft itself. It goes in as a piece of tendon and is then rebuilt into something more ligament like over months. Biopsy studies in people confirm that this happens in stages but do not agree on how long each stage takes (Claes and colleagues, 2011). That is the honest reason these programs run for 9 to 12 months rather than until the knee feels normal, which usually comes a lot sooner.

When can you drive, work and fly?

Work and driving have national advice behind them. Flying does not, at least not for this operation.

For work, the NHS says to go back when you feel ready, which it says is usually after about 4 to 6 weeks, depending on the job. The useful conversation with an employer is about specific tasks, not a date: kneeling, ladders, driving, long spells standing, carrying. Ask your surgeon or physio before you take any of them on.

For driving, the NHS says not to drive until your medical team says you are fit to drive, and to tell your insurer. Both halves of that matter, and the second one is a contract question rather than a clinical one, so your insurer is the only one who can answer it. The Aspetar guideline puts a marker next to that from the braking research. It advises not attempting to drive before you can safely hit the brake in a simulated emergency, and says that is typically about 4 to 6 weeks after surgery on the right knee and about 2 to 3 weeks after surgery on the left (Kotsifaki and colleagues, 2023). Read the test first and the weeks second, because the test is the recommendation and the weeks are only where it usually lands.

The shorter of those two numbers has a condition on it that is easy to miss, and it matters most to readers in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Trace the figures back and they come from a review of five studies of braking after an ACL reconstruction. Three of them used a simulator with an automatic gearbox, so the only leg working the pedals was the right one, which is where 4 to 6 weeks for a right knee and 2 to 3 weeks for a left knee come from. The shorter figure rests on one of those three, which found people with a left-sided hamstring graft braking like healthy controls within 2 weeks while those operated on the right were still slower at 6.

The one study that used a manual gearbox, with a clutch under the left foot, tested people 4 to 6 weeks after a hamstring graft reconstruction and found their braking and their driving no worse than controls whichever knee had been operated on. It did not test anyone earlier than that, so it cannot tell you a shorter wait is safe, and the reviewers concluded that 4 to 6 weeks were needed and that the side should be disregarded for people who drive a manual car (Salem and colleagues, 2021).

So a left knee in a manual car is not a 2 to 3 week question. None of these numbers is permission to drive in any case: they are group averages from laboratory simulators, and the clearance is still your medical team's.

For flying, we could not find a national ACL-specific waiting time in the sources we read, so this page does not state one. The nearest thing we found is the UK Civil Aviation Authority guidance for health professionals, which gives waiting times after several kinds of operation and none for knee ligament surgery. Its one orthopaedic rule is about a plaster cast: most airlines restrict flying for 24 hours on flights under 2 hours and 48 hours on longer ones, because of the circulation risk if a swollen leg cannot be raised (CAA). Most ACL reconstructions do not involve a cast, so that rule is not your answer either. Ask your surgical team, and ask your airline, because airlines set their own rules.

The thing to raise with your team is the clot question, not the flight itself. The NHS names having had surgery, being much less mobile than usual, and a trip of more than 4 hours by plane, car or train among the things that raise the risk of a blood clot, and it says a clot can happen weeks after an operation (NHS). The warning signs below describe what a clot in the leg and in the lungs look like, and they are the reason this question deserves a phone call rather than a guess.

What changes the dates, and who sets them

Your surgeon's protocol comes first, and nothing on this page overrides it. They know what was done inside the knee, what was repaired on the way, whether a limit on weight or bending still stands, and whether there is a reason particular to you to wait longer.

Your physio sets the stage you are in, and they do it by testing, not by counting. If you want one question to take to your next appointment, it is this: what do I have to show you before I move on. That answer is more use than any month.

Before the operation there is work worth doing too, and it belongs to ACL prehab exercises rather than to this page.

This page is general education and not advice about your own knee. Where a date belongs to your surgeon, it stays with your surgeon.

Related exercise programs

Warning signs

Get emergency help now

Emergency: sudden, severe pain in your lower leg that is much worse than you would expect, especially with a tight bandage or brace on the leg. It may come with a tight, swollen leg, pain that gets worse when the muscle is stretched, numbness, pins and needles or weakness. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be acute compartment syndrome, which needs urgent surgery.
Emergency: since your operation, you suddenly become short of breath, you get chest pain or pain in your upper back that may be worse when you breathe in, you cough up blood, your heart is beating very fast, or you faint. Call emergency services straight away, even if your leg looks normal. These can be signs of a blood clot in the lungs (pulmonary embolism).

Get help today

Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
Same day: since your operation, your wound is oozing, leaking or has pus coming out of it, or its edges start to come apart, or your knee is tender, swollen, painful or red and it is not getting better or is getting worse, or you have a high temperature or feel hot and cold or shivery. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin. Contact your surgical team the same day, or get urgent medical advice if you cannot reach them. These can be signs of an infection in the wound or the knee joint. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
Same day: your knee swells up quickly over a few hours and feels tight and full, with more pain than the day before, and there was no fall, twist or pop to explain it. This can happen while your temperature is normal and the wound looks fine. Contact your surgical team the same day, or get assessed the same day at urgent care or an emergency department if you cannot reach them. Bleeding into the joint and an early infection inside the joint can both look like this from the outside, and a knee that is hot to touch, or a temperature alongside it, makes an infection more likely. Do not wait for a call back if either is there. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department.
Same day: your knee gives way, or you feel a pop, a shift or a twist inside it, and it swells up within a few hours or is very painful. Keep your weight off it and contact your surgical team, or get assessed the same day at urgent care or an emergency department. A fall or a twist can damage the new ligament (graft) or a meniscus repair. If the knee looks out of shape, or your foot turns numb, cold or pale, go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. If the knee only feels a little unsteady now and then, with no swelling or pain, it is not an emergency, but tell your physio or surgeon in the next few days.
Same day: the knee is locked, which means it is stuck bent and you cannot straighten it, even after gently trying to move it, or it suddenly will not bend or straighten as far as it did before. Contact your surgical team, or get assessed the same day at urgent care or an emergency department. A torn piece of meniscus can get caught in the joint and block it. This is different from the slow, gradual stiffness of the early weeks.
Same day: you suddenly cannot straighten your knee by yourself or lift your leg straight when you could before, often after a pop, a fall or a stumble, or you notice a dip or a gap just above or below your kneecap. Keep your weight off it and contact your surgical team, or get assessed the same day at urgent care or an emergency department. After a patellar tendon or quadriceps tendon graft, the tendon or the kneecap near where the graft was taken can rarely tear or break.
Same day: a leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
Same day: new numbness, tingling or burning in your lower leg or foot, beyond the numb patch of skin near your scars. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. If it started after a fall or an injury, or your foot or toes turn cold, pale, blue or gray, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.

Book an appointment

Within a few days: your knee still will not straighten as far as the other one, or bend as far as your physio expects, and it is not improving from week to week, or it is slowly losing movement it had. This is not an emergency, but contact your physio or surgeon within the next few days. Tell them if the knee feels blocked right at the end of straightening, or clunks or hurts there, rather than simply feeling tight, and tell them if it stops short of straight in the months after your operation. A small lump of scar tissue at the front of the knee (a cyclops lesion) can block the last few degrees, and when it does it usually shows up 3 to 6 months after surgery. It is uncommon, most surgeons treat it first with rehab aimed at straightening, and a short keyhole operation to remove it is kept for a knee that stays stuck (D'Ambrosi and colleagues, 2026). Stretching harder is not the answer either way. Getting the knee fully straight is one of the first aims of rehab.

Common questions

How long before I can walk without crutches after ACL surgery?

When your physiotherapist says so, which for most people is somewhere in the first few weeks, not on a fixed day. The NHS advises using crutches at first if you were given them, and stopping when your physiotherapist tells you to. The Aspetar guideline supports starting to put weight through the leg in the first week, built up in a controlled way, and OrthoInfo notes that how much weight you are allowed depends on your surgeon and on any other injuries treated in the same operation. A meniscus repair is the common reason for a longer or stricter limit on weight bearing, so that answer has to come from the team who did your operation. Walking without crutches is also not the same thing as walking without a limp, and the limp is the part that tends to outlive the crutches.

When does the swelling stop after ACL surgery?

There is no published date for it in the sources we could read, so this answer says so instead of inventing a week. What the guidelines do is set a level rather than a deadline: before a first run, the Aspetar guideline asks for no more than a trace of swelling in the knee, which tells you the swelling is expected to be settling by then rather than gone in a fortnight. Day to day, swelling is the dial for how much the knee can take, and it usually shows up the evening after a session or the next morning instead of during it. A knee that is more swollen the morning after is telling you the load was too much. Swelling with heat, a temperature or a leaking wound is a different thing entirely, and the warning signs on this page give that one a same day route.

Is it normal for my knee to hurt in week 3?

Some pain and stiffness during the exercises are expected at that stage, and so is a stretching feeling. That is usually fine if it settles soon after you finish and the knee is no more swollen or sore the next morning. What is not part of the usual pattern is sharp pain, pain that builds with every repetition, or a knee that is clearly more swollen the next day, and the answer to those is to drop back a step rather than to stop altogether. Tell your physio either way, because they may want to see the knee before you carry on. Pain with heat in the knee, a temperature, or a wound that is leaking is not an overdone session, and the warning signs on this page say who to contact and how fast.

Does a meniscus repair change the ACL surgery recovery timeline?

It can change it a good deal, and the limits it brings usually last longer than the ones on walking. After a meniscus repair your surgeon may restrict how much weight you take and how far you bend the knee, and the restriction on deep or loaded bending, twisting and kneeling often runs for months rather than weeks. A systematic review of rehabilitation after isolated meniscal repair found wide variation between protocols and no agreement on range of motion or weight bearing (O'Donnell and colleagues, 2017), which is exactly why the only limit that counts is your own surgeon's. Ask specifically how deep you may bend and squat, and when you may twist or kneel. Until you have that answer, treat a right angle at the knee as a firm ceiling for loaded bending.

Can I speed up my ACL recovery timeline?

You can stop losing time, which is not the same as going faster. The things that actually move the timeline are the ones the stages are built on: getting the knee fully straight early, getting the thigh muscle switched on, keeping swelling down, and doing the work consistently instead of in bursts. Skipping ahead tends to cost you weeks, because a knee that swells up after a session has to be backed off and settled again. The graft itself is also on its own schedule, whatever you do: a systematic review of human graft biopsies describes the graft being rebuilt in stages after surgery but reports no agreement on how long each stage takes (Claes and colleagues, 2011). A knee that feels normal is not evidence that the graft is ready, which is the reason these programs run on for months after the knee stops feeling like a problem.

References

Kotsifaki R, Korakakis V, King E, et al. Aspetar clinical practice guideline on rehabilitation after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2023;57(9):500-514. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2022-106158
van Melick N, van Cingel REH, Brooijmans F, et al. Evidence-based clinical practice update: practice guidelines for anterior cruciate ligament rehabilitation based on a systematic review and multidisciplinary consensus. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2016;50(24):1506-1515. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2015-095898
Rambaud AJM, Ardern CL, Thoreux P, Regnaux JP, Edouard P. Criteria for return to running after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a scoping review. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2018;52(22):1437-1444. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2017-098602
Grindem H, Snyder-Mackler L, Moksnes H, Engebretsen L, Risberg MA. Simple decision rules can reduce reinjury risk by 84% after ACL reconstruction: the Delaware-Oslo ACL cohort study. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2016;50(13):804-808. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096031
Högberg J, Wernbom M, Hamrin Senorski E. Can we rebuild what has been taken? A narrative review of biological and functional consequences of hamstring tendon harvest in ACL surgery. Science Progress. 2026;109(3):00368504261461371. https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504261461371
Briem K, Zebis MK, Haraldsson BÞ, Bencke J, Fernandes L. Rehabilitation guidelines after autograft anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction need more graft-specific exercise recommendations: A scoping review. Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy. 2026;34(1):83-101. https://doi.org/10.1002/ksa.12666
Claes S, Verdonk P, Forsyth R, Bellemans J. The "ligamentization" process in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: what happens to the human graft? A systematic review of the literature. American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2011;39(11):2476-2483. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546511402662
O'Donnell K, Freedman KB, Tjoumakaris FP. Rehabilitation Protocols After Isolated Meniscal Repair: A Systematic Review. American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2017;45(7):1687-1697. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546516667578
D'Ambrosi R, Helito CP, Della Villa F, et al. Practice patterns, controversies, and proposed management algorithm for cyclops syndrome after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: An international survey. Journal of ISAKOS. 2026;19:101165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisako.2026.101165
NHS. Recovering from ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) surgery. Page last reviewed 17 July 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/acl-anterior-cruciate-ligament-surgery/recovering/
NHS. Complications of ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) surgery. Page last reviewed 17 July 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/acl-anterior-cruciate-ligament-surgery/complications/
American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. ACL injury: does it require surgery? OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/treatment/acl-injury-does-it-require-surgery/
Salem HS, Park DH, Friedman JL, et al. Return to Driving After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Systematic Review. Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine. 2021;9(1):2325967120968556. https://doi.org/10.1177/2325967120968556
UK Civil Aviation Authority. Assessing fitness to fly: guidance for health professionals, surgical conditions. https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers/before-you-fly/am-i-fit-to-fly/guidance-for-health-professionals/surgical-conditions/
NHS. Deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Page last reviewed 30 April 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/deep-vein-thrombosis-dvt/
NHS. Compartment syndrome. Page last reviewed 4 September 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/compartment-syndrome/
NHS. Pulmonary embolism. Page last reviewed 25 May 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pulmonary-embolism/
NHS. Sepsis. Page last reviewed 14 May 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sepsis/

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-24.

This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.