Bears tight end Zach Miller had urgent vascular surgery on Sunday night to repair a torn popliteal artery after he dislocated his knee in the Week 8 loss to the Saints.
The Bears issued a statement Monday that surgeons from the University Medical Center New Orleans completed successful surgery to stabilize the injury. Miller remains at the hospital with Bears medical personnel for further evaluation.
"We are thinking of Zach and his family and support from our entire organization goes out to them," the Bears said in the statement.
Miller suffered the injury when he landed awkwardly while attempting to make a touchdown catch. He was carted off the field and then rushed to the hospital.
The injury was another tough break for Miller, who missed the final six games of the 2016 season with a broken right foot.
"It's brutal, gruesome," Bears right guard Kyle Long said.
"I didn't watch it after I saw it the first time. To go from the elation of, 'What a play, what a throw!' in that situation of the game to overturn (the touchdown call) and Zach obviously being injured ... it's really unfortunate. We lost a really good guy today."
Current and former Bears also shared their thoughts on Miller's injury on Twitter.
In the third quarter of Sunday's game, on third-and-10 from the Saints' 25-yard line, Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky launched the football into the end zone, where Miller had a step on Saints safety Rafael Bush. As Miller attempted to haul in the ball, his right foot hit the ground first and his left leg followed, bending gruesomely the wrong way as he tumbled.
As he sat up, Miller's left hand immediately found his left knee. The knee was diagnosed as dislocated at a New Orleans hospital, Fox announced after the Bears' 20-12 loss.
NFL players also took to Twitter to wish Miller well.
Dr. Andrew Hoel, a vascular surgeon and assistant professor at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, said he saw video of the injury, which he said appears to be a posterior knee dislocation.
"With this type of injury, the knee is dislocated or it goes the wrong direction from where it's supposed to turn," he told the Tribune. "And directly behind the knee is the popliteal artery, the main artery that gives blood flow down to the remainder of the lower part of the leg and the foot. The popliteal in this type of injury can get stretched or torn, and so ... the person or patient can lose blood flow to the lower leg as a result."
Hoel added, "Part of what happens is the knee joint basically slides along itself, pushing against the artery causing it to stretch even more. If that backward flexion or hyperextension of the knee is severe, it can really stretch the artery, which is in a relatively small confined space behind the knee."
Hoel said the veins from the other leg are used as a bypass to reconnect the upper and lower parts of the artery that weren't damaged. Clots could form in the lower leg if blood flow through the artery was cut off for a significant amount of time, he said, and they would need to be removed.
Hoel has been an assistant professor at Northwestern for five years. He estimates he has seen fewer than 10 posterior knee dislocations in his career.
