Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn claims she nearly lost her leg after a string of injuries during the Winter Games and, for the first time, reveals just how close she was to losing her limb.
“I’ll give you the full rundown,” Vonn said, looking back on her experience. “Basically, I had a complex tibia fracture. I also fractured my fibular head, my tibial plateau. Just kind of everything was in pieces.”
She also explained how her injuries were further complicated by compartment syndrome, which is a serious medical condition characterized by high pressure in muscles resulting from swelling and internal bleeding.
“The reason it was so complex was because I had compartment syndrome,” Vonn said. “And compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck, and it basically crushes everything in the compartment. So all the muscle and nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies.”
She also tore her ACL and broke her ankle in the accident.
She credited orthopedic surgeon Dr. Tom Hackett for saving her leg. “Doctor Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from being amputated,” Vonn said. “He did what’s called a fasciotomy, where he cut open both sides of my leg, kind of flayed it open, so to speak, let it breathe. And he saved me.”
