ACL Repair by Professor Adrian Wilson sees an elite lacrosse player back on the pitch in 4 months.

Both Georgina and her parents were keen to go down the route of repair.

Adrian explained that with the repair he uses the patient’s own tissue and stitch this back to the origin from where it has torn and reinforce this with 2 mm FibreTape. To do this Adrian only needs to make 3 mm tunnels and the patient obviously gets to keep their own ACL.

He says: “We don’t need to take any of the patient’s own tissue for reconstruction which is what we would have to do if we were going down that route.”

Georgina understood that she was very high risk for failure and in fact in her age group the failure rate is as high as 30%. With a repair as opposed to a reconstruction if she did sustain a further injury she would still have her own tissue available for a second procedure, so by doing the repair we wouldn’t be burning any bridges.

One of the other big advantages is that with the repair technique, if it’s successful, the patient can return as Georgina did to full contact sport at four months as opposed to having to wait 9 to 12 months which is the case with the reconstruction.

Adrian concludes:“I’m delighted to say that the surgery went well and the very successful repair did indeed get Georgina back at four months training in the England squad and competing. This is a great innovation, I believe, in the management of both paediatric and adult ACL injuries and I’m sure more and more patients are going to be asking for this type of procedure in the future.”