At 14 years old, Adam Vasser of Los Altos, Calif., was an active kid who loved baseball.
Then a mysterious virus attacked his heart, making a heart transplant necessary to save his life.
He underwent long-term steroid treatment to prevent transplant rejection, which left him with an excruciating knee disorder called osteonecrosis. Now 23 and nearing graduation from college, after enduring 15 surgeries for his knee and heart, he's finally been able to return to sports.
Thanks to a new surgical technique used on Vasser's left knee called "cellular grafting," the 23-year-old is out cycling and refereeing soccer games on a virtually pain-free knee. The procedure was done for the first time on three young patients with steroid-induced osteonecrosis of the knee by orthopedic surgeon Stuart Goodman, MD, PhD, and is described in a preliminary report to be published in the April issue of the Journal of Arthroplasty.
"Even though a knee sounds like a little thing after all Adam's been through, it was big to get it fixed," said Adam's mother, Karen Vasser of Los Altos, who took her son from one doctor to another looking for help. "He was real athletic so the knee was one of the things that prevented him from getting back."
The new surgical technique involves transplanting cellular material from the pelvic area into the knee. Two years after surgery, Goodman said, all three patients had returned to nearly normal activity and knee function with no complications.
"It's a fairly simple procedure," said Goodman, the Robert L. and Mary Ellenburg Professor in Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Osteonecrosis of the knee is a rare disorder. When it occurs in young people, it's most often the result of steroid therapy and is called secondary osteonecrosis. The bones in the knee start to die from a loss of blood supply, leading to severe pain, progressive arthritis and eventually the need for artificial joint replacement.
"Many patients do OK without surgical treatment," Goodman said. "With those patients, I wait and prescribe pain medication." But for young patients who still have a lifetime of activity ahead of them, Goodman wanted alternatives.
When Vasser first started looking for knee treatments, he was told by several doctors to simply use crutches until the knee collapsed and then get an artificial knee replacement. Pain medication was discouraged because of its effects on his kidneys after all the heart transplant treatment drugs. He, too, was searching for a better answer when he met Goodman.
All three of Goodman's patients were between the ages of 18 and 21 and suffering from steroid-induced osteonecrosis. Among the two other patients, one had a diagnosis of Crohn's disease and the other had been treated with high-dose steroids for severe optic nerve swelling associated with the use of minocycline.