Healio/Orthopedics Today reported on an HSS study that found ACL reconstruction in pediatric patients yielded small changes in coronal plane alignment, featuring insight from Peter D. Fabricant, MD, MPH, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at HSS. 

“We have to respect the growing skeleton, and these ACL reconstruction techniques do a good job, but there is still a small percentage of patients who will have changes in their leg alignment after surgery,” Dr. Fabricant told Healio about results presented at the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America Annual Meeting. “It is important to know that for informed consent, for monitoring and, potentially, for intervention.”

Dr. Fabricant shared that these results may provide evidence for consideration of the use of guided growth — a procedure that allows correction of alignment of the knee.

“Although we did not look directly at guided growth, there is awareness for surgeons to, in addition to monitoring patients closely, potentially intervene at the time of surgery to correct the underlying coronal plane alignment, as it may get slightly worse in a subset of patients,” he shared. But he said more research is needed on when guided growth might come into play and the impact it may have on these patients.

Read the full article at healio.com.