PTV: Dr Fisher On D-Rod
Rodan had a second LARS reconstruction on Monday after an arthroscope revealed the original ligament, which was used to repair the 27-year-old's ruptured ACL last December, had frayed.
The LARS ligament has proven to cut the recovery time in half for a full knee reconstruction compared to the traditional 12-month method, which involves rebuilding the ACL with a graft from the hamstring or patella tendon.
Fisher said the positives of the LARS procedure still outweighed the negatives.
"The traditional ACL graft can rupture and fray as well. In fact the traditional method has a failure rate of up to 20 per cent at AFL level," he said.
"From my understanding the LARS ligament failure or re-do rate is around the 5 per cent mark, so there was no question about what we would do when we decided to redo it … we would use the LARS ligament again."
Forward Brett Ebert, who injured his knee against Melbourne in round 21, is three months into his rehabilitation from the same procedure, and surgeons used a similar LARS-style ligament to aid retired champion Warren Tredrea's recovery from a serious ankle injury last season.
Rodan and Ebert are both in their late 20s, while Tredrea was over 30 and at the end of his career when he had the synthetic ligament inserted into his ankle.
Fisher said he would be reluctant to use the LARS technology on a young player just starting out in the AFL.
"In the general community there have been some younger footballers or sportspeople having the LARS ligament in their late-teens or early 20s, but at AFL level I'd still certainly be sticking with the more traditional method because we still don't know the long-term implications of the LARS," Fisher said.
"Our policy hasn't changed from this time last year. With an older player who might only have a couple of years to go [in his career], we'd probably still go with the LARS ligament.
"We had a good result with David last season, so we don't see any reason to change at this stage."
Rodan was able to play 19 AFL games and complete a full month of pre-season training before the ligament failed and Fisher said the dashing onballer was likely to follow the same rehabilitation program as last time.
"We won't do anything that much different to last year. We're deliberately going fairly conservative anyway," he said.
"The good news was that the condition of David's knee in general was excellent. There was no major reaction to the artificial graft, so we're fairly optimistic that whilst David's starting again he should recover in a similar vein to last year."
