Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment to talk about ACL reconstruction. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Doctor serving patients from Greater Houston through offices in Sugar Land, TX, and in Houston, near the Houston Galleria. Dr. Bennett specializes in treating injuries of the shoulders, elbows and knees. If you’ve experienced a knee injury and would like an appointment for a knee evaluation, please call 281-633-8600.
This is the transcript of the fourth part of a radio show that was hosted by Dr. Bennett on 1560 The Game. With Dr. Bennett was Bob Lewis of 1560 The Game and Dr. Stephen Simonich of Katy Orthopedics in Katy, TX.
Click here to link to the first portion of the show and here to link to the previous portion of the show.
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| Knee MRI |
DR J. MICHAEL BENNETT — Anyway, we’ve got one more call here. This is Wayne regarding a question on ACL surgery. Wayne, welcome to Saturdays With Jay. We appreciate you calling in. What can we do for you today?
CALLER 3 – Hey guys thanks for having me on the show. I’ve just got a quick question. Unfortunately, I’m getting ready to have ACL surgery – I’ve been trying to be Michael Jordan on the weekends – and I got in a discussion with my doctor about the procedure and he said there are a couple of options as far as taking a graft from your own knee verses a cadaver graft. I didn’t even know there were options for that. How do y’all determine which one to use and what most benefits the patient? How do y’all make those decisions?
BENNETT – For grafts there are three options when you have an ACL, and it breaks down into two categories, like you said, your own tissue or a cadaver tissue. You can do a hamstring of your own tissue, you can do your patella tendon of your own tissue, or you can do a cadaver of either of those, and it just depends on the surgeon’s preference. A lot of this can be age categorized. For me typically, my younger athletes who are playing high school sports in their teens or so, I tend to lean more towards a bone tendon bone graft which is a patella tendon graft, an autograft, as opposed to a hamstring. Usually for my weekend warriors like yourself I’d probably lean more towards a hamstring autograft verses an allograft which is a cadaver graft, and also do that for my older patients, which studies are showing now that older patients – even older than 50 years of age or so – that have instability and an ACL tear actually can do better after getting an ACL reconstruction as long as their arthritis is not too severe. Back in the day we used to recommend anybody over the age of 45 to not undergo ACL reconstruction. But that’s in my practice. Dr. Simonich, what’s your criteria?
SIMONICH – Well a lot more people are coming in with that question, Wayne, and it’s good that you’re asking those questions. Basically for me if you’re a male, contact athlete in high school or college or even on the professional level usually it’s a bone tendon bone autograft and then we use a lot of hamstring autografts for people that are a little bit gun shy about using a cadaver graft. Cadaver grafts work well, it really depends on your activity level, and you should have a discussion with your physician about that.
BENNETT – Hopefully that answers your question, Wayne. I think it’s something that you have to discuss with your physician and you guys come up with a game plan. One thing you do have to take into consideration I think that back in the day you’d be a little more concerned about cadaver tissue because of the fact that as far as the sterilization process there was always a risk – a very, very minimal risk – of transmission of bacteria or viruses, I think it’s like one in a million, but those processes have significantly evolved and the risk of transmission of any kind of bacteria or viral disease actually drops significantly these days and it’s actually a much safer procedure than it was say 10 or 15 years ago. So they’re all viable options, it depends on your activity level and your lifestyle, also your surgeon’s comfort in those grafts and how to harvest those grafts. Obviously you don’t want to have a surgeon do a patella tendon graft on you if they’ve never done one. You know you want to make sure that they’ve had some kind of experience with that.
SIMONICH – How old are you Wayne?
CALLER 3 – I’m actually 38.
SIMONICH – Thirty-eight and you play basketball?
CALLER 3 – Well I try to anyways. (laughs)
SIMONICH – I think either one, hamstring allograft or autograft would be great for you. The advantage of an allograft just to be fair, too, is you don’t have the added morbidity, the pain, of taking that graft from yourself.
BENNETT – So we appreciate you calling in, Wayne.
Click here to link to the next portion of the show. For more about ACL reconstruction, please view Dr. Bennett’s video.
If you’ve experienced a knee injury and would like an appointment with Dr. Bennett, please call 281-633-8600.
