Adolescent Sports Injury Clinic

As children become more involved in extreme sports such as skiing and snowboarding and are generally more active at a younger age, Professor Adrian Wilson and his team are seeing increasing cases of ligament damage, particularly to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). As children’s bones and ligaments are not yet fully developed, they are at greater risk of damage.

Adrian is widely respected around the world for being the first surgeon to carry out anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) internal brace repair for sports injuries in children. He has the largest global experience in ACL repair with the internal brace technique in children and speaks frequently at conferences and courses about his results and experience. This new minimally invasive surgery is especially successful in enabling children to rapidly return to their normal activities. Recovery is significantly quicker than with traditional ACL surgery, something that is revolutionising the treatment of this common injury.

Adrian’s Paediatric interests are focused on simple and complex issues and offer a truly unique service in this field, together with Mr Raghbir Khakha who works side-by-side with Adrian when they carry out surgery he is also often supported by other eminent orthopaedic surgeons who work as part of his team in collaboration carrying out complex paediatric and adult knee surgery.

Adrian and Raghbir have developed a injury prevention program to minimise the risk of a rerupture and this is supported by Mr Ben Wilde, a specialist physiotherapist, who has spearheaded the design of both a preventative warm up protocol and post-operative rehabilitation programme for patients.

Adrian and his group have produced significant amounts of evidence which they have published in the use of the internal brace for ligament repair and this is now growing globally and becoming the operation of choice particularly in the paediatric knee where we need to keep all of our options open for the future as well as do minimum invasive surgery to get children back and active as soon as possible.