Thursday, June 28, 2007

Holy Disintegrating Allografts, Batman!

I found a fascinating posting today on some site called Big Bob's Knee Blog* or something like that. It's about ACL allografts (i.e. tissue from a cadaver) failing because the tissue disintegrates!

Aaaaaaaaiieeeeeeeee! Something new to worry about.

This discovery led to me searching on "disintegrate allograft ACL". I'm happy to report I haven't found much (yet). But I did learn that a GoreTex synthetic ACL option exists. http://bioweb.usc.edu/courses/2003-spring/documents/bisc406-a.broosan.pdf

It has a high failure rate, so even if I had known about it before my surgery I wouldn't have wanted it. But it is cool to think that some day you could replace an ACL with man-made material.

One of the links to the right covers work early physicians did trying to find a suitable ACL substitute, such as using braided silk thread. Which reminds me that there's a book out there about the evolution of successful blood transfusion. You wouldn't believe what some poor woulded souls had to suffer coursing through their veins all in the name of science -- pig's blood, coconut milk. I heard the author on NPR a long time ago but have never followed up to read the book. The horror of what happens when your body rejects pig's blood has never left me.

Merde! What a morbid post!

*The actual site www.factotem.org/cgi-bin/kneebbs.pl/read/294003

3 comments:

jar66su said...

stop scaring me and my knee!

Anonymous said...

I realize this is a very old post but...

i just came from my orthopedist to review mri results. the acl in the left knee -- cadaver ligament -- is actually GONE. Bone spurs have developed which are keeping the knee somewhat stable. But in the place where there was still some ligament during a 2014 mri, there is now an empty place. Disintegrated. Absorbed by my body. Delightful.

DA said...

Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that actually happened to you? What happens now?