Dr. Richard Ryu, the surgical director at Summit Surgery Center, performed the center’s first BEAR procedure to repair an ACL tear.
SANTA BARBARA — The Summit Surgery Center in Santa Barbara is one of the first surgical centers on the West Coast to utilize a new implant to treat anterior cruciate ligament tears.
According to a news release, bridge-enhanced ACL repair, aka BEAR, is the first medical advancement to enable the body to heal its own torn ACL, one of the most common knee injuries in the U.S.
For the past 30 years, the standard of care for ACL tears relied on replacing the injured ACL with a graft.
Dr. Richard Ryu, the surgical director at Summit Surgery Center, performed the center’s first BEAR procedure on a 17-year-old soccer player.
“Preserving a patient’s native ACL instead of replacing it with a graft has always been a goal,” Dr. Ryu said in the news release. “The BEAR implant represents the first substantial advancement in the treatment of ACL years in decades and has the potential to change the standard of care. Although technically challenging, the benefits are enormous.”
Based on clinical trials of BEAR, follow-up stories found that this new implant is less invasive than the previous standard of care, restores natural anatomy and function of the knee and has higher patient satisfaction.
The BEAR implant was pioneered by Dr. Martha Murray at the Orthopedic Center at Boston Children’s Hospital.
— Forrest McFarland
