An unconventional knee surgery will be conducted on Portland Trail Blazers’ center Festus Ezeli next week. The surgery will require a tissue donated from a cadaver.
According to ESPN, the surgical procedure will be performed next week at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado. The doctor who performed the rare surgery is Dr. Robert LaPrade.
Ezeli will be the first NBA player who will undergo this type of surgery, according to SB Nation. The other professional athlete who had undergone similar procedure was an NFL quarter back Carson Palmer, during his stint with Cincinnati Bengals in 2006.
Palmer suffered a torn ACL and MCL in his left knee during the playoffs. For an NFL player, such injury could end his career.
However, he underwent a reconstructive surgery, to replace a ligament which was donated from someone named from Julie De Rossi, who had died 22 months earlier. The surgery was conducted in Houston, Texas on Jan. 10, 2006 by Dr. Lonnie Paulos. The donor, was a 44-year-old who was killed in a car accident and her mother Dorothy Hyde approved to have her daughter’s knee tendon being transplanted to Palmer.
Following the surgery, Palmer had to undergo a rehabilitation process for him to be able to walk again. Within six months he came back to the field and played again.
The musculoskeletal allografts surgery is a rare surgical procedure. It involves taking the human tissue obtained from cadaver and implant the tissue in the recipient. There are only hundreds of cases around the world for the procedure.
Following Palmer’s successful surgery, an English soccer star Michael Owen had to undergo similar procedure to reconstruct his knee on Sept. 6, 2006 by Dr. Richard Steadman, the founder of Steadman Clinic, where Ezeli will undergo similar procedure next week. Steadman is the renown physician for the reconstructive surgery
In Ezeli case, he was expected to have a full year rehabilitation. He injured both his left and right knees when he played for the Warriors. Watch his interview with The Oregonian regarding his injury on Sept. 26, 2015 below: