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GDT: “Whatever It Takes” (McDavid Injury Documentary) • Friday January 24 • After the Skills Comp • SNET

Satire

Satire

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Nov 20, 2016
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nturn06 said:
I dissagree, I think that Doctors are trained to look for the threatement, which in their oppinion gives the best result. And the reality is that, in exactly the same situation, different people have different results. And there are still many things about the human body we don't fully understand, which means that doctors and terapeuts (alternate medicine guru's) cannot know everything, and because of this they will be wrong sometimes.

For me there are few things to consider here:
  • Right now it looks like this was the best choice for Connor, but will the same be true in 5 years? 10 years? Hopefully yes, but we don't know that, yet we judge doctors assuming that this true.
  • For every succesfull case of alternative therapy there are probably few cases of unsuccesfull ones. Every success is reported, people start recommending the same threatment to everyone, and claim that doctors don't know anything, yet nobody cares about the ones who failed. How many docummentaries are about the guys who refused surgery and cannot walk anymore or lost ther leg. I would bet that there are many such cases.
  • If I understand right, the main reasons Connor opted for therapy instead of surgery are the shorter recovery and the fact that surgery would had alter the way he skate. He know that the alternative was very risky, but if it worked it was extremelly beneficiar to him, due his job. Being able to skate at 40 mph instead of 35 mph was so essential to Connor that he was willing to take a big gamble, but how essential is this for the regular Joe? Or even for a mediocre athlete. I somehow agree with you here: doctors are trained to consider always the treatment which is more likely to succed, and often they will not consider the high risk treatment, whose results will give a small bonnus which is not important to 99.99% of the people but may make a difference to 0.01% of the people.
  • And this is in my oppinion the most important component here: how many people would be willing to spend 10-12 hours per day for many months, work extremelly hard on this, not doing anything to put the knee to the risk, to avoid the surgery, knowing fully that after 3-6 months would could find out you still need therapy. I know I couldn't and I know that many people cannot even afford to do that. I have huge respect for Connor for being able to do that, but this is not a viable treatment for most people in his situation. If I was a doctor and I would have to recommend to a patient between surgery and going through this nightmare on the chance that they may avoid surgery I know exactly which I would pick.

This is a very very standard example of people considering a choice, picking only the (few) succesfull outcomes and concluding that that is the answer. Yes, it is true that in some situations therapy works better than surgery. But the data we get on this is very skewed, we only find out the successes and never see the drawbacks. And while many people think that the doctors are ignorants, the funny part is that every failure of therapy probably ends up on tehir surgury table, they very likely see both the successes and the failures.
Click to expand...

There is so much wrong with this post that I don't know where to start. Rehab isn't alternative therapy. Rehab and surgery are both strategies to manage severe injuries with varying levels of success specific to the type of injury. A doctor can recommend rehab just as they can defer to surgery. Alternative therapy is like seeing a naturopath or going for acupuncture... Some people find doing both very beneficial and generally speaking a wise approach to alternative therapy/medicine that interests you is to ensure that it does not get in the way of evidence'based medicine and discuss it with your doctor. Many doctors embrace alternative medicine, especially in this day and age, so long and it doesn't have interactions or negative impacts with their treatment plans. Many even support its role in recovery. The mark of a good naturopath is one who also has a healthy respect for his physician counter-part.

Rehab is often the most sound decision of treatment for the majority of soft tissue injuries actually. The most serious of soft tissue injuries are treated with surgery. McDavid's injury fell under the latter but there was some evidence (or a potential lack-thereof) that led the doctors to have varying opinions on the subject. That's because there is no clear evidence that absolutely supports one approach over another in PCL injuries. Traditional wisdom would support surgery here, but the evidence itself of the efficacy of that approach is not really fully supporting that ideal particularly in an athlete.

Nonoperative Treatment of PCL Injuries: Goals of Rehabilitation and the Natural History of Conservative Care

The above free meta-analysis outlines the issues behind decision making very well. Of particular a statistic in this paper notes that 91% of athletes (60% of whom are rugby players) in a large study were still playing just fine after 2 years post-rehab of their serious PCL injuries.

McDavid made the decision to rehab the knee with an MRI machine in close proximity to ensure the rehab was effective... 99% of us don't have the ability to do so, and I suspect his recovery would make a very interesting case study for professional athletes but unlikely to be of use for the average person.

He did not make a bad decision or a risky decision here. There is not enough evidence to support that even if he were merely to flip a coin to decide. He made the decision he thought would be best for his unique situation with consideration of the resources available, and chose to closely monitor to ensure that there was evidence of healing. Seems very responsible to me.
 
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ConnorMcMullet

ConnorMcMullet

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Jun 10, 2017
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I just watched it for the first time, and it's certainly not going to be my last. Wow.

Speaking as a hockey fan, not an Oilers fan, my respect for McDavid has multiplied. That level of dedication and determination is incredibly rare, and even rarer among those with his natural talent.
 
dssource

dssource

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I finally got around to watching this yesterday. I was hesitant and still don't like seeing the actual injury (even though they showed it 10 times or more in the documentary, it was always hard to watch).

1) I have a new found respect for Connor. The effort he put in to his recovery and the fact that he didn't miss even 1 game is absolutely remarkable. His determination to get back to playing as quickly as possible, and playing at the level that he expects himself to play, again, remarkable.
2) I'm not sure if his teammates fully new the extent of his injuries and what the road to recovery entailed. This guy is your leader and he has shown why. The sweat, tears and pain he went through over the summer should be noted by each and every single player and each one should now go into each and every game and put in 100% start to finish to end this season. You could hear how down Connor was when he was speaking about missing the playoffs last year. That CANNOT happen this year. Absolutely not! The team needs to step up and make sure that does not happen. Connor has done everything he can and now the team needs to do everything they can. Prove you are worthy of playing with one of the greatest hockey players of all time.
3) He had so many professionals of different disciplines working on him and getting his body back into shape, I feel he will actually be better now or in time.
4) The NHL needs to make sure stuff like this, especially to our stars, never happens again. I know, I know...good luck with that one.

I thank the hockey Gods for not only giving the world McDavid, but for putting him on the team I've followed my entire life.
 
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bone

bone

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Coffey Filter said:
Yea but Stephen John's came back from a concussion after a few years.
Click to expand...
This is a weird situation, mostly remarkable because of the fact he didn't miss a single regular season game despite a very major injury, and not only that, came back to put up 17 points in the first 7 games back. That's just ridiculous.

I don't want to make little of situations like the Stephen John's of the world because that's a guy who likely was told to quit hockey altogether and wouldn't have access to an entire team of specialists like McDavid to help him through, but he persevered. That's admirable.

McDavid's situation is a combination of extensive medical commitments from multiple professional disciplines couple with an personal drive second to none. That level of commitment is astonishing and further cements the fact that the reason he is the best is likely because he's likely the most (or one of the most) committed player to excellence in the sport.

They are different situations completely and both with great merit.
 
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Senor Catface

Senor Catface

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I think the "bland personality" narrative will die for good after this documentary. McDavid is pretty interesting and introspective during the entire process.

Anyone would sound bored and disinterested when you have Rishaug asking you questions day in and day out.
 
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