Bolt puts the squeeze on sporting injuries

A NEW device could improve the success rate for surgery on a knee injury which has afflicted sports stars such as Celtic's John Kennedy and Manchester United's Michael Owen, scientists have said.

Researchers studying the rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee have developed a mechanism which could fix the problem.

ACL injuries are common in sportsmen and women but can affect others, with 11,000 people needing surgery for the problem in the UK each year.

Kennedy never fully recovered from his injury during his Scotland debut in 2004, and Owen ruptured his ACL during the first few minutes of England's World Cup match against Sweden in 2006.

It has traditionally been treated with screws that bind the damaged ligament to the bone, but this method sometimes fails because the screw slips out of place.

Scientists have now developed a new device, known as a GraftBolt, which squeezes the bone and ligament together and is less likely to slip free.

It was created by researchers from the University of Aberdeen's School of Engineering and Martyn Snow, a leading specialist in joints and cartilage at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham.

They say it increases the reliability of ACL reconstruction and reduces the need for follow-up procedures.

Dr Bin Wang, who led the team at Aberdeen, said: "The NHS performs around 11,000 ACL reconstructions per year but the procedure is not universally successful, with failure rates of five to 25 per cent often resulting in further surgery and long term problems. The main cause of this is loss of graft fixation within the tibia in the early post-operative period.

"GraftBolt aims to improve the patient's quality of life by successfully repairing their injury first time and improving the quality of bonding of the graft to the bone."