New transplants bring hope for knee injuries

Knee pain is a common problem for all kinds of athletes, from pros to those who just play on weekends.

When the knee gets messed up, it’s tough to fix.

This kind of injury can keep athletes from playing for a long time, sometimes forever. However, there are new ways to do knee transplants.

Tatum Vedder served, set and spiked her way through high school and college, but this competitive volleyball player was benched at age 22 when something snapped.

Tatum suffered tears to her anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus. Her cartilage was separated from the bottom of her thigh bone. After three different surgeries and 20 months in physical therapy, Tatum was still in pain.

“I just was struggling to get better,” Tatum said.

Scripps Clinic orthopedic surgeon Tim Wang took a unique approach to treat Tatum. He reconstructed the ACL but also performed two rare transplant surgeries.

First, he took living cartilage and bone from a donor. He removed a small coin-shaped cylinder of damaged cartilage and underlying bone and replaced it with a section of healthy donor cartilage and bone.

“It’s almost like patching a piece of drywall, in that we can drill out or ream out a coin-shaped hole where the problem is and create a matching coin from a donor,” Wang said.

The other surgery involved replacing Vedder’s medial meniscus with healthy tissue from a donor.

“I feel strong and stable—100%. I feel like it worked,” Tatum said.

After physical therapy, Vedder celebrated back out at the beach, this time, riding the waves and getting back into the game.

The best people for the transplant are those who are less than 40 years old, active and still feel pain even after trying physical therapy or steroids.