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One of the sacred cows of modern orthopedic sports medicine is ACL Reconstruction. Over the years, I’ve shared with you more than two dozen before and after MRIs of patients treated with our novel Perc-ACLR procedure and who avoided ACL surgery. So let’s dig into this new case.

Perc-ACLR

The Percutaneous ACL Repair procedure has been used now for almost a decade in our practice. We’ve published two research papers with two more on the way (1,2). This procedure uses a very precise fluoroscopically guided injection of the patient’s own bone marrow concentrate into the damaged ACL and looks like this:

This New Patient

Eddy was a 44-year-old man seen by Dr. Schultz in 2015 for a basketball injury who had two months of physical therapy and then was diagnosed with an ACL tear. He had intermittent swelling with basketball and mountain biking. Dr. Schultz performed the Perc-ACLR procedure and these were his results:

The ACL MRI is from 2015 and shows the dark ACL along the yellow triangles. The red arrow points to the large tear (white break). The image on the right was taken recently because he tweaked his knee 6 years after his Perc-ACLR procedure while playing basketball and shows a completely normal ACL.

More Before and After Pics

Here are many ACL before and after MRI images in patients who have had the Perc-ACLR procedure:

What Are the Benefits of the Prec-ACLR Procedure?

Watch this video:

The upshot? We have helped many patients avoid ACL surgery with this highly precise Perc-ACLR procedure. If you or a loved one has this injury, think twice about getting surgery as you may be a candidate to get back quicker and help repair your original equipment.

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References:

(1) Centeno CJ, Pitts J, Al-Sayegh H, Freeman MD. Anterior cruciate ligament tears treated with percutaneous injection of autologous bone marrow nucleated cells: a case series. J Pain Res. 2015;8:437–447. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26261424

(2) Centeno C, Markle J, Dodson E, et al. Symptomatic anterior cruciate ligament tears treated with percutaneous injection of autologous bone marrow concentrate and platelet products: a non-controlled registry study. J Transl Med. 2018;16(1):246. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30176875

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile