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Busted Up
By Tess Weaver
After nine surgeries in three years, including a full meniscus replacement, former pro skier turned musician Matt Reardon was bone-on-bone. But thanks to a miraculous procedure last spring, a rigorous rehab program and the best Physical Therapists's he's come across, Reardon plans to be charging this season.
"I feel damn good," says Reardon. "For a skier, paste grafting saves your ability to lead a normal life."
The man responsible is San Francisco based Dr. Kevin Stone, former US Ski Team orthopaedic surgeon. Stone's revolutionary procedure, Articular Cartilage Paste Grafting, is helping injured skiers get back on the hill within four to six months.
"In the past," Stone says, "the alternative was to tell the patients, 'We're sorry you have an arthritic knee. Try to live with it and wait until you need a replacement,'" says Stone. "We're now rebuilding knees biologically rather than artificially."
A large number of ski knee injuries involve damaged cartilage, the smooth, slippery connective tissue that forms the surfaces of the knee joints. Because cartilage is not surrounded by blood vessels, it doesn't have the natural ability to heal. Articular cartilage damage often occurs in conjunction with damage to another area of the knee, such as the ACL or meniscus and is common both in young skiers with traumatic injuries as well as skiers with plaguing arthritis from an old injury. Stone has discovered a way to kick-start a reluctant natural repair system that exists within damaged knees, essentially helping the body repair itself.
The hour-long procedure removes healthy cartilage from the non-weight bearing part of the knee, pounds it into a paste, stirs in the patient's own blood, then re-inserts it into the knee so that the cartilage actually re-grows replacement tissue. Most of the time, the cartilage regenerates and remains durable and pain free for up to 12 years.
"We tell our patients when we try to paste-graft a defect it's like grouting a hole in a plaster wall," says Stone. "We're trying to fill in that defect with the body to grow into it. We know the plaster isn't perfect, but it's pretty good repair tissue."
Stone has conducted the procedure on almost 200 patients and claims a 94% success rate. He is still looking to the future.
Stone's biotech company, CrossCart, is experimenting using pig ligaments for ligament transplantation. The procedure is still in clinical trials, but has been successful for trial subjects, particularly in ACL replacement. Rick Lewon won the 2004 Candian Masters Downhill Championship 9 months after "pig lig" ACL surgery.
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