Worldwide sports surgery leader describes the basics of the ACL
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Sports medicine, which focuses on improvement of athletic performances, diagnosis and treatment of injuries in professional and amateur athletes, as well as on the promotion of exercise and physical health in the general population, has become one of the fastest growing health care specialties in the last decades. EFORT is therefore pleased to welcome Freddie H. Fu, MD, DSc(Hon, DPs(Hon), one of the most prominent figures in sports medicine, physical therapy and mechanical engineering for sports, to give the Michael Freeman Honorary Lecture on Friday 11 June 2020.
Indeed, one of the main components of our 2020 scientific program is the presentation of a key figure from outside of continental Europe, internationally known for his outstanding contribution to the orthopaedics and traumatology specialty. The plenary lecture, which pays tribute to the memory of Prof. Michael Freeman and is scheduled during the last day of the EFORT Congress, aims at gathering the biggest audience of all the scientific sessions for the presentation of a leading topic that summarizes one individual’s exceptional career path.
Fu, the David Silver Professor and chair of the department of orthopaedic surgery at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, will share with the orthopaedics and traumatology community on hand at the upcoming EFORT Congress in Vienna his broad knowledge on the anatomic reconstruction of the ACL, clinical outcomes and sports-related problems. Fu’s research path genuinely mirrors the medical history of advances in ACL repair, both regarding the evolution of the treatment techniques and the state-of-the-art concepts of this sports discipline.
Since 1982, Fu has dedicated his time to reconstructing ACLs. However, his unprecedented career started long before this. For this exceptional work, Fu graduated with the Latin honors summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1974 and received his BMS in 1975 from Dartmouth Medical School. He earned his medical degree in 1977 from University of Pittsburgh and completed his general surgery internship at Brown University. He returned to University of Pittsburgh for an orthopaedic research fellowship and to complete his orthopaedic residency training. During that time, Fu was an AO International Fellow at the Hannover Trauma Center in Germany and an arthroscopic surgery fellow in East Lansing, Michigan.
As an ESSKA-AOSSM Sports Medicine Travelling Fellow in 1988, he visited more than 30 sports medicine centers in Europe. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Point Park University, an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Chatham University, and in 2010 was appointed distinguished service professor by the University of Pittsburgh. Currently, Fu also serves as the head team physician for the University of Pittsburgh Athletic Department.
Fu has been honored with more than 260 professional awards and honors, made more than 1,200 national and international presentations, co-authored 173 books chapters and has edited 30 major orthopaedic textbooks. He is the author of more than 675 peer-reviewed articles with an impressive h-index of 128 for the more than 57,000 citations for his work among the top orthopaedic researchers. In 2019, the University of Pittsburgh was named the number one university in the world for ACL publications during a 40-year period and Fu was the most published author within the topic with more than 378 publications on the ACL.
Fu is a member of and has held offices in numerous academic organizations including the prestigious Herodicus Society and American Orthopaedic Association. He served as the president of the Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society and as a board member of the Arthroscopy Association of North America. In 1996, he was awarded by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Presidential Challenge Award for significant contributions in athletic training. In 2008, he assumed the presidency of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine for a 1-year term and, in 2009 was named president of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (ISAKOS) for a 2-year term. He has also held board positions with the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation and the AOSSM.
During the annual 2020 EFORT Congress, Fu will explore his personal achievements in the study of the ACL as a dynamic structure, rich in neurovascular supply and compromised of distinct bundles, which function synergistically to facilitate normal knee kinematics in concert with bony morphology. Characterized by individual uniqueness, the ACL is inherently subject to both anatomic and morphological variations, as well as physiological aging.
Friday 12 June 2020 | 12:15 – 12:45
What is Anterior Cruciate Ligament?
Worldwide, orthopaedic surgeons perform about 800,000 ACL procedures each year. ACL injuries are often devastating for the patient as they might result in both acute and long-term clinical problems, with osteoarthritis and joint instability being among the persistent problems. Surgical reconstruction, which is frequently required, became fast and efficient after minimally invasive techniques (one- and two-incision arthroscopically assisted ACL reconstruction) were developed, but remained inconsistent with respect to reproducing the native ACL anatomy. Indeed, these procedures use tendon for the replacement procedure, and the location where the ligament joins the femur and tibia remains approximate.
The piece of work summarizing the results of Fu’s 3 decades of research in the ACL field shaped the evolution of ACL reconstruction by shifting it from the traditional, transtibial arthroscopic technique to a more anatomic and individualized concept which replicates the knee’s normal anatomy and restores its kinematics for better long-term knee health and quality of life. This paper was awarded the Kappa Delta Elizabeth Winston Lanier Award in 2014. Currently, Fu’s research team conducts more than 100 studies that assess different aspects of the knee anatomic approach by analyzing the knee as an organ. Curiously, he also has several ongoing collaborations with vertebrate paleontologists and curators of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and veterinarians at the Pittsburgh Zoo, who allow him to contribute to studies of the bony and soft-tissue anatomy of the knee in the context of evolution and biodiversity. Moreover, Fu has worked with C. Owen Lovejoy, PhD, the anthropologist who reconstructed the skeleton of “Lucy,” the famed 3-million-year-old hominid that walked upright, to confirm there are two ACL bundles in the knee, and unequivocally establish this characteristic as an ancestral condition among a wide variety of primates and other mammals.
Undeniably, Fu is working everywhere from the zoo to the natural history museum, to the OR and his research laboratory, to prove that orthopaedics is multidisciplinary and that orthopaedic surgeons should rely on nature to shape surgery rather than the opposite.
Today, Fu oversees one of the top and most ethnically and gender-diversified orthopaedic residency training programs in the United States, which is one of the reasons he received the 2011 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Diversity Award. This particular detail on his curriculum vitae is perfectly aligned with our Vienna Congress Main Theme as EFORT has decided to promote its own diversity, as reflected by the federation’s structure itself, with its 41 National Member Societies.
In recognition of his national and international achievements, Fu has received lifetime and honorary Memberships from several well-recognized societies such as The European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy and ISAKOS. He received the George D. Rovere Award on behalf of the AOSSM and was inducted to their Hall of Fame in 2016. The Japanese Orthopaedic Society of Knee, Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine honored Fu with the Masaki Watanabe Award. For Fu’s pioneering work in orthopaedic sports medicine, in 2018 the University of Pittsburgh renamed its Sports Medicine Center the UPMC Freddie Fu Sports Medicine Center.
Take the opportunity to learn from the foremost authority on ACL reconstruction in the world why the use of the knee joint dictates how nature allows it to evolve, during the Michael Freeman plenary session scheduled for the upcoming Congress in Vienna. Attendance to this honorary lecture is included in the full congress registration. Visit the registration platform as of 8 January 2020 for details and rates.
- Reference:
- Fu FH, et al. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc. 2015;doi:10.1007/s00167-014-3209-9.
- For more information:
- All about the EFORT Annual Congress, 10 to 12 June 2020, Vienna, Austria
- Honorary Lectures in Vienna