DHR Health Brownsville sees 25th surgery treating ACL injuries performed

ACL injuries are among the most common sports injuries with somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 ruptures every year in the U.S. alone, according to Corewell Health.

They’re often treated with the Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair, or BEAR implant, an orthopedic procedure that restores the ligament rather than replace it. And after only joining DHR Health since this January, Dr. Daniel Romanelli, orthopedic surgeon at DHR Health Brownsville, has just completed his 25th BEAR implant.

Romanelli was the first orthopedic surgeon in the Rio Grande Valley to conduct the procedure at DHR Health’s sister hospital in Brownsville, according to the hospital system.

For Romanelli, being able to conduct a procedure that restores the natural function of the knee to Valley residents has been a “great joy” that he hopes to continue.

“There are a number of advantages to restoring a ligament instead of replacing it as well as providing a healing environment to an ACL reconstruction with the natural function of the knee,” Romanelli said in a news release. “The BEAR implant is an exciting medical technology that has been clinically proven to enable a patient’s torn ACL to heal and to restore the natural function of the knee as well as enhancing the healing environment for the ACL graft.”

The way it works is that a physician will remove the remaining part of the torn ACL and reconstruct the ligament with another tendon from either the patient’s leg — also known as an autograft — or a tendon from a deceased donor, or allograft.

Romanelli is currently using quadriceps autografts for the procedure, a new gold standard for ACL grafts, according to the release.

The implant then surrounds the ACL graft to protect the injury from the synovial fluid to create the “ideal healing environment.”

The implant acts as an ortho biological barrier as well as a bridge that helps the ends of the torn ACL heal simultaneously.

“Dr. Romanelli injects a small amount of the patient’s own blood into the implant, which is applied in and around the ACL in a minimally invasive procedure,” stated the release. “The combination of the BEAR implant and the patient’s blood enables the body to heal the ACL.”

Romanelli currently treats patients at his Brownsville and La Joya clinics — located at 4770 N. Expressway, Suite 305A in Brownsville and 1000 E. Expressway 83, Suite 5B in La Joya, respectively — and will soon be seeing patients in DHR Health’s Edinburg campus in the fall.

For more information about the BEAR implant procedure, call Dr. Romanelli’s office at (956) 362-5870.