Congratulations to Dr. Martha Murray for her patience and persistence in developing the Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair (BEAR) technique. Her work in developing this technique is very comprehensive and thorough. It represents a virtual lifetime of research work by Dr. Murray and her group on looking at a means to perform primary repairs of ACL tears. She has examined a great deal of techniques to try and use biologics to heal ACL tears in many different animal models.
One of the most important findings of her research is that performing an ACL repair is very difficult, and it explains why initial attempts in the 1970’s and 1980’s did not work.
To date, Dr. Murray has performed a repair using blood and a specific scaffold on ten patients whose injuries are in the subset of ACL tears where the ACL still has some good substance after it is torn. Initial results are promising and will be validated by at least 5 years of follow-up to determine the longterm outcomes of the repair.
In my own practice, this new procedure could ultimately benefit approximately 10% of the patients I see. For the other 90% of patients, the ACL tear is too shredded to be able to find enough substance to sew the ends back together using the BEAR technique.
Read Article: A new procedure could revolutionize ACL repairs
