CARMEL, Ind. (WISH) — Tearing your ACL is one of the most severe injuries an athlete can face in competition.

If you tear your ACL, doctors will normally take a tendon from somewhere else in your body to replace it. A new procedure avoids that, allowing the ACL to repair itself.

“The biggest benefit is that you don’t have to use a graft from someplace. You have to rob Peter to pay Paul, so all the grafts have a little bit of a downside,” said Dr. Peter Maiers.

Maiers at Forte Sports Medicine and Orthopedics are among the doctors performing a new surgery involving the BEAR implant.

With the BEAR procedure, you don’t have to take a graft from a different part of the body.

Maiers stitches the medical implant into the athlete’s knee allowing the ACL to repair itself over time.
Compared to the traditional ACL surgery, “Their outcome scores were almost the same,” he said.

The new surgery does have some downsides though. “Even though we are getting it to heal, there is a slightly higher reinjury rate using the new procedure,” Maiers said.

Is it one of those things where these types of procedures still need to be done so that it can be perfected in a way where it could be the new gold standard?

“Correct. I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be something that will change how we take care of this injury in the future,” Maiers said.

Maiers is not suggesting elite-level athletes use this surgery for their knees, but, if you’re not a high-level athlete, he says it’s a good alternative to avoid having to take a graft from somewhere else in your body to replace the ACL.