Study Seeks Answers to ACL Failures (written by Biloine Young @ OTW)
Here is the problem: More than 200,000 anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgeries are performed each year in the United States and from 1% to 8% fail. Most of the patients whose initial surgery failed then choose to have their knee ligaments reconstructed for a second time. Those second surgeries have a failure rate that is almost 14%.
Sports medicine specialists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are leading a national study analyzing why a second surgery to reconstruct a tear in the knee’s anterior cruciate ligament is so often unsuccessful.
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases has awarded a $2.6 million grant to Washington University School of Medicine to conduct what is believed to be one of the largest orthopedic, multicenter studies ever conducted.
Rick W. Wright, professor of orthopedic surgery, co-chief of Washington University’s Sports Medicine Service and an orthopedic surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, has helped recruit 87 surgeons from 52 centers to participate in the Multicenter ACL Revision Study (MARS). All are sports medicine specia...
