Brett D. Owens, MD

Flanigan and his co-authors are applauded for their fine work investigating the role of bacteria and biofilms in ACL reconstruction and proposing a possible cause for tunnel lysis. The cause of tunnel lysis is still debated, and this important area has seen relatively little investigation. Tunnel lysis in a revision ACL setting causes significant technical considerations and often leads to bone grafting procedures. The MARS Group had a poster at the AOSSM meeting as well on this topic and found that ACL revision patients had lower outcome scores. Our lab has been performing a similar analysis of ACL revision cases and has corroborated these findings, although with smaller numbers. Flanigan found bacterial DNA present in 87% of examined samples and more impressively, were able to correlate tunnel diameter with the amount of bacterial DNA identified. I look forward to seeing this study in its entirety and hopefully continued work in the area.