Several sportspersons, who suffered sports related injuries resumed their sports career after getting an Autologus Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) surgery at a hospital in Delhi. While an Uttarakhand based 24-year- old State cricket player Jayant, who suffered an injury in his knee, resumed cricket after the surgery, a 58-year-old golfer, Harbhajan Singh also resumed golf after the ACI surgery.

The ACI is a joint preserving procedure, where in the first stage an arthroscopic evaluation of the knee joint is performed. The surgeries were performed by Dr Deepak Chaudhary, Director of the Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine Centre of BLK Super Speciality Hospital.

According to Dr Chaudhary, Jayant’s surgery was done in two stages. In first stage a small piece of the cartilage biopsy was taken from the non- articulating and non-weight bearing portion of the knee and the cells were cultured and re-grown. In the second stage, the re-grown cells were filled in the defected area.

“Young cricketer’s injury was very disappointing. Between two stages, a gap of four weeks was given.

Jayant is one of the many patients who have been treated with this cartilage preserving procedure. We have performed close to 70 such procedure over the past eight years with encouraging results,” added Dr Chaudhary.

He further said that the main beneficiaries of the surgery are young sports persons, sometimes people above 50 also avail the benefit.

“Though the main beneficiaries of this procedure are young sportsmen, there are about 20% patients over the age of 50 who can have similar targeted cartilage defects which can be like Harbhajan benefited by ACI,” he said.