Positive first response from medical community...

This survey is part of a study to compare two different scoring systems commonly used by surgeons to assess the success of cartilage repair surgeries.

I am constantly amazed by some of the experiences that people tell me they go through when they go to see their physio after they have had articular cartilage repair. A couple of classics that I come across way too frequently are -

“When I told my physio that I had ACI surgery they said – ‘so you’ve had your ligament repaired’!” or 

It wasn’t until I found myself in the position of being a prospective patient for articular cartilage repair that I decided to do a bit of reading around the area. Now you may think that as I am a fully qualified chartered physiotherapist that I should have known all about articular cartilage problems and how they are managed. The reality of things is that the only time in the whole of my physio training that articular cartilage was ever mentioned was in relation to osteoarthritis.

How did a UK physiotherapist working in sports medicine who five years ago had never even heard of half of the available articular cartilage repair procedures end up working with some of the top orthopaedic surgeons in the cutting-edge area of articular cartilage repair? Where to start? As the white rabbit told Alice in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – “I’ve always found it’s helpful to start at the beginning.” So that is where I’m going to start - at the beginning!