Advanced repair gives Calvert Hall athlete a long career
It was a hot August day on the Calvert Hall School fields and the highly-ranked varsity soccer team was scrimmaging. Midfielder Elliott Crompton aggressively jumped up for a header and, as he came down on the ground, “something weird happened” in his knee. “No big deal,” he thought, and kept playing.
But his mom got a frantic call at work the next day.
“I can’t move,” said Elliott, who was sitting at his computer with his knee locked. His mother rushed home and somehow got Elliott over to see Calvert Hall’s sports trainer Chris Zinn for his opinion. Zinn had a pretty good hunch about what had happened, and Elliott and his mom decided to make an appointment with orthopaedic surgeon Dr. A.J. Detterline, also the team’s physician.
The diagnosis was a pretty common sports injury –a tear to his lateral meniscus, the outer cartilage that cushions the knee. Then Elliott made another very important decision with his doctor’s guidance. He opted for treatment with a lengthier recovery, but the best possible result. Instead of removing the meniscus, Detterline performed an intricate operation to repair it. In the hands of an expert, this gave Elliott many playing years on his knee.
