Since she was five years old, Seattle resident Grace Kinney has been playing soccer. During junior year in high school, Grace, who is team captain and plays forward, wrenched her knee in the middle of a game. “I just planted wrong,” she says. “I knew right away that I had seriously hurt my ACL and freaked out because of all the horror stories I’d heard from friends with the same injury. I really wanted to play my senior year, and I knew the recovery from ACL reconstruction surgery could prevent me from playing.”
Grace’s parents, Autumn Eadon-Kinney and Ed Kinney immediately began researching approaches to ACL repair and reconstruction that would allow Grace to heal fully and still play her senior season. Her father found an orthopaedic surgeon in Scotland, Gordon Mackay, MD, who had developed an innovative technique to treat damaged ligaments and tendons, including the ACL, called the InternalBrace.
Fortunately, the family did not need to travel to Scotland for the surgery. Dr. Mackay referred them to Wiemi Douoguih, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon and co-medical director of MedStar Sports Medicine and director of Sports Medicine at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, whom he had trained in the InternalBrace technique. Grace and her family contacted Dr. Douoguih to discuss her options.
“Grace was looking for an alternative to standard ACL reconstruction surgery,” Dr. Douoguih explains. “Surgical data shows that when you perform the reconstruction using tissue from somewhere else in the body, nine to 12 months of recovery is required. If you return to playing a sport before eight months, there’s a high risk of a new injury, especially for young female soccer players like Grace. With conventional surgery, Grace would have had to sit out her senior season. But in the last 10 years, I’ve pioneered the use of ACL repair with internal bracing and Grace was a good candidate for this approach.”
How does ACL repair with internal bracing work?
During conventional ACL reconstruction surgery, a new ligament is created using a graft from either one of the patient’s tendons from another location in the body, like the patellar tendon or hamstring, or one from a human tissue donor. The torn tendon is surgically removed and the new tissue is attached to the thigh bone and shinbone inside the knee joint.
When Dr. Douoguih performs ACL repair with internal bracing, he reattaches the native ACL and augments it with a piece of Kevlar that follows the same path as the ligament. This acts as a brace, absorbing force and supporting and reinforcing the ligament as it heals.
“Research we recently published comparing the internal bracing repair with the conventional repair found that at the three and six month marks, the knees with internal bracing felt more normal to patients, they were able to take part in a higher level of activity, and they met their physical therapy milestones after surgery sooner,” says Dr. Douoguih.
Back on the field for senior season and college
Grace and her family traveled nearly 3,000 miles so Dr. Douoguih could perform her surgery. The procedure was performed on an outpatient basis and Grace and her father stayed in D.C. for a week for follow-up and physical therapy at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, then flew home.
“I started walking without a brace three weeks after surgery and committed to physical therapy three to four times a week to work towards getting cleared to play my senior year,” says Grace. “Within four months, I was playing soccer well and without pain. My ACL felt stronger than before my surgery. The whole experience, with both the doctor and hospital, was really positive.”
Grace was awarded a soccer scholarship to Queens College in New York, a Division 2 school. Says Autumn, “We think the world of Dr. Douoguih. He changed Grace’s life. Without Dr. Douoguih and his expertise, she most likely wouldn’t be able to play college soccer. Thanks to him, Grace has the opportunity to live her dream.”