 Hello, I'm Dr. Sunil Kinney, consultant joint replacement and arthroscopy surgeon at Manipal Hospital's Bangalore. There are four important ligaments in the knee, the front and the back ligaments which are the anterior cruciate ligament or the ACL. The one behind is the posterior cruciate ligament or the PCL. The ligaments on either side of the knee which are called the collator ligaments. The inside of the knee they are called the medial collator ligament or the MCL. The one on the outside of the knee is called the lateral collator ligament or the LCL. To start with the most common injuries are the anterior cruciate ligament or the ACL injuries. Most likely due to a twisting kind of injury such as while playing sports such as football, backminter or any certain kind of road traffic accidents as well. To prevent these kind of ligament injuries during sport and activities it is very important to start off with what we call as warm-ups. So if you are playing any sports it is important to warm up, do adequate stretches so that there is adequate blood supply in all the muscles and they will heat it up. Similarly it is important to wear a protective gear as per the sports requirement. It is also important to wear adequate or the right footwear for certain kind of sports and once the sporting activity is done it is also important to cool down which again involves certain kind of stretches to be done. So as long the muscles are in good action as long as you scale your activity say start off with once a week twice a week and then probably scale your activity level as well as the duration. These kind of ligament injuries can be minimized to the lowest extent as possible. The second most common ligament injuries in the knee is the medial collateral ligament or the MCL. These kind of injuries usually occur when there is any kind of tackling injury or a blow to the inside of the knee which results in this kind of MCL injuries. Luckily MCL injuries can be tackled without surgery. When we see MCL injury again depends on the grade of injury. There are three grades of a ligament injury can be grade one, two or three. Most of the first, second and certain kind of isolated MCL injuries in the non-sporting person can be treated by conservative or non-operative management. This mainly involves using a brace for about six weeks and then reassessing the patient. It's also important to carry out what we call as price treatment. R-I-C-E-R stands for rest, eye for icing, C for compression or use of a crepe bandage, E for elevation. Rise treatment is a generalized treatment for all kind of ligament injuries which we usually follow. So medial collateral ligaments are successfully treated most of the times by bracing and non-operative treatment. There are certain kind of MCL injuries which need operative treatment especially in a grade three injury in a sports person. Number one and number two in a setting of multi-ligament injuries this kind of medial collateral ligament may require surgical intervention as well. The rarest of other causes of injuries could be a posterior cruciate ligament or a PCL injury or lateral collateral ligament injuries. These kind of isolated PCL or LCL injuries are treated or well managed with non-operative treatment with bracing and physiotherapy subsequently.