Watch the video above: Canadian Freestyle skier Kaya Turski’s comeback helped by experimental surgery. Crystal Goomansingh reports.
TORONTO – It happened on her last day of training with the Canadian ski team in Mount Hood.
Olympic athlete Kaya Turski was working on a switch left side rotation, a spin that isn’t a natural move for her. She came around the turn just a little short and felt a snap.
She knew right away what it was – she’d ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament, a bundle of fibres crucial in stabilizing the knee, twice before.
That was August 11. The Montreal native was just six months away from the Olympics.
“A zillion things went through my mind when I fell and I felt my knee go. You know, obviously the Olympics was the first thing that came up,” Turski told Global News.
“It’s something I have been training for for as long as the event has been included, basically my whole life.”
READ MORE: Canada’s athletes in Sochi: Meet skier Kaya Turski
- What is a halal mortgage? How interest-free home financing works in Canada
- Ontario doctors offer solutions to help address shortage of family physicians
- Capital gains changes are ‘really fair,’ Freeland says, as doctors cry foul
- Budget 2024 failed to spark ‘political reboot’ for Liberals, polling suggests
Fast forward to just a week before the Olympics: Turski captured her fifth Winter X Games gold medal in women’s ski slopestyle.
But her road to recovery came with the help of a Canadian doctor and an experimental knee surgery combining a cadaver’s ligaments and synthetic ones.
“The challenge is, it’s not her first time. So the decision-making is quite a bit different than someone who’s already had the surgery,” Dr. Bob Litchfield said.
He’s the medical director of the Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic and a professor at the University of Western Ontario. It was his skilled hands that oversaw Turski’s surgery and recovery.
In Turski’s case, Litchfield had to take into account the hardware that’s already in her knee, tunnels already drilled through bone from her previous injuries.
WATCH: Kaya’s video diary from the day she discovered injury through surgery and recovery to her return to the slopes
READ MORE: Despite injuries, Canada’s extreme athletes have high hopes for Sochi Olympics
With a countdown to the Winter Games looming, Turski and Litchfield also didn’t have time on their side.
Ultimately, Litchfield decided that he could put new soft tissue grafts in her knee, supplemented by a synthetic ligament. The grafts, which are tissue that replicates the function of the ACL, were used from donor cadavers.
The anterior cruciate ligament joins the tibia through to the femur. It’s important in stabilizing – especially with a stop-and-go sport. It controls when you plant your foot, change directions, turn on a ski and land from a jump.
Those are all stressors on the ACL. And sometimes, like in Turski’s case, the load is too great.
Between the cadaver’s tissue and the synthetic ligament, Litchfield said he hopes the knee surgery will give Turski immediate stability and that over time, the graft will grow into her own bone.
READ MORE: Canadian skier earns Olympic berth the hard way
“We didn’t want to go through a short-term solution for Kaya. She’s still a very young person,” Litchfield said.
“I sure hope it’s the last surgery she has on this knee. That’s the plan, anyway.”
ACL reconstructions and revisions of ACL reconstructions are pretty common, especially in young professional athletes. Revision rates can reach as high as 20 per cent for reconstruction, Litchfield said.
“The difference with this surgery was, most of the time we’re using tissue alone and in Kaya’s case, we’ve incorporated tissue with synthetic together with the goal of trying to get her back to high-level performance earlier,” Litchfield said.
“In that way, it is unusual and I guess experimental, if you will.”
READ MORE: Canada’s Turski wins slopestyle gold at freestyle worlds, Howell wins silver
It’s unclear how the synthetic will hold up, especially with Turski’s slope-style skiing.
She’s constantly coming from height, accelerating, slowing down and landing jumps, akin to a gymnast doing aerials and multiple back flips.
Litchfield said he’ll be watching Turski like a “nervous father.”
“We learn a lot from elite athletes. We learn what is capable of the human body that we didn’t think was capable,” Litchfield said.
For now, he wouldn’t recommend this kind of surgery to a larger group of patients. But that could change.
“Surgery’s always evolving. We’re always looking at new techniques and better ways of doing things and better ways of decreasing failure rates and re-injury rates so it has to stand up to scientific scrutiny,” Litchfield said.
WATCH: Back to school for cross country ski team
In the meantime, Turski said she’s “feeling good.” She returned to skiing in early December.
“The first run was obviously something I just needed to get it over with. It was nerve-wracking but as soon as I clicked in and started taking my first turns, everything just made sense and I feel really good,” Turski said.
Some days come with some aches and soreness but she has a full-time physical therapist on hand to help work out the kinks.
She’s also taking on maintenance workouts, cycling, and ice baths to keep her knee in check for the Olympics.
“I’m just excited to stare at the course, look down at my feet, pinch myself, realize I’m actually there. Look at my coach, look at my teammates…and let it be go time,” Turski said.
“I made it here against all odds, really.”
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
Comments