Teenage patient overcomes arthritis with innovative cartilage repair surgery
When I was six, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and anaplastic Panama. Um, and I had surgery in the city and then I had treatment in Boston. I was on growth hormone because the radiation treatment kind of stopped my growth hormone production that kind of caused my knees to fracture. They think it was a combination of the exercise I was doing then and the dosage of growth hormone I was on. Um, they weren't really sure how to go about it. So I was kind of in a brace on my right knee for a few years, we finally came to Dr. Stone. Other surgeries can actually lead to more lesions down the road. And you know, his has no, he puts no hardware on your knee. So that was definitely like a good option for us, kind of went for it because I had been like living with it for eight, six, or eight years. I was, I want to say miserable, but I was pretty annoyed and pretty bad just, uh, that I couldn't really do anything...in terms of like impact. I couldn't run or anything, um, and walking long distances would trouble it. So it definitely went super well. I'm a lot more hopeful coming in every day after my surgery, I think was like a huge part of that. They always gave me things to do and, you know, made sure my knee was doing well, which definitely played into the recovery. They were super proactive.
George is an example of an extremely challenging case due to a brain tumor. He underwent chemotherapy, which led to bone death in his knees and also a disease called osteochondritis dissecans. He was told from an early age of about 10 to not play any sports and to just try to live with his knee pain, we able to perform our articular cartilage paste, grafting technique that worked extremely well for George and relieved his knee pain, restored him back to activities. We followed patients out now more than 25 years, having done this paste grafting for these OCD lesions and have been very pleased with the outcomes,
Small movements going downstairs and stuff. I really don't feel it like I did before. I'm able to bike a lot more and biking is not really an impact thing, but it would trouble my knee before I've been doing some, like lifting with my friends. It's all going super well. And I'm not really feeling any pain. We've had water polo practices the past few weeks, and I'm not having any issues with my knee. Hopefully, I might get captain senior year. Um, now that I can actually play a lot stronger,
George C. Profile
No teenager should be confronted by arthritis. However, arthritic knees were in the future of our young athlete George who had lesions on his articular cartilage due to side effects from the treatment of a brain tumor. Having already persevered such intense medical treatment at a young age, helping someone like George avoid decades of knee pain and return to a more typical life for a teenage boy was critical to every member of our staff.
By using his articular cartilage paste graft technique, Dr. Stone was able to fully restore the cartilage tissue disrupted by radiation. George is doing the rest from there. This is him after rehabbing his first knee and he's now dedicating himself to his physical therapy program for his second knee. His hard work with the StoneFit rehab team will soon have him back to water polo and all his other favorite sports. We are thrilled to play a small part in getting George back to enjoying things a teenager should.
