My physio had never even heard of ACI!

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 

When I went to the physio they had never heard of microfracture/OATS/Mosaicplasty/ACI (delete as appropriate!) and they had no details of my operation from the surgeon.

A short while ago I conducted a small survey on return to activity after ACI and one of the areas that people who had undergone cartilage repair told me is that there is a need to enhance knowledge and education not only for patients but also for physiotherapists.

The advent of the internet has resulted in huge potential for enhancing knowledge outside of the traditional and rather static education pathways. This is especially important for progressive, dynamic areas such as articular cartilage repair that are at the cutting-edge of medicine with evolutionary changes occurring in intervals of months rather than years or decades. To put this into perspective information in textbooks is usually 3-6 years out of date on the day that it first hits the book shelves. Medical journals fare somewhat better but it still takes a couple of years to go through the process of submitting research and getting it published.

So this is where there is a huge role for the internet and websites such as KNEEguru to support and complement the traditional sources of knowledge by providing a highly responsive and interactive vehicle for informing patients. This is critically important as there is increasing evidence to support the fact that well informed patients are not only better patients but are also patients with better outcomes.