A few days after returning to the circuit after an inactivity of more than two and a half years, in which he warned that more than a lap it was the beginning of a farewell, Juan Martín del Potro is already in Switzerland to undergo a new medical treatment in the right knee that has been causing him major headaches since he fractured his kneecap in October 2018 in Shanghai and in which he received four surgical interventions (with professionals from Barcelona, Miami, Bern and Chicago). The site chosen this time is the Rennbahnklinik, in Muttenz, a Swiss commune in the canton of Basel-Countryside.
Founded in 1981 as the “first sports clinic in Switzerland”, the Rennbahnklinik “is a leader in the holistic care of active people. The clinic’s core competencies include orthopedics, sports medicine, physiotherapy and functional diagnostics,” is the presentation of the medical center on its official website.
Other elite tennis players passed through there such as the Serbian Novak Djokovic, the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Italian Fabio Fognini and the Spanish Pablo Andújar. In fact, in the recent Buenos Aires tournament, Del Potro left open the possibility of reappearing on the tour in the future and emulating, in a certain way, what was achieved by the Scot Andy Murray (two hip operations and competing with an implant metal) and Andújar, who suffered multiple elbow surgeries and managed to continue playing after having surgery at Rennbahnklinik.
After about six months of inactivity due to a right elbow injury in 2017, Djokovic, the current world No. 1, also had surgery at Rennbahnklinik. It was in February 2018 and he was able to compete again without problems. Roger Federer, Swiss Olympic athletes and the FC Basel soccer team are also treated (or were treated) at the same medical center.
“There are cases of players in tennis who close the blinds and then miraculously return for one reason or another. I will always leave that window open. If tonight was the last, I was happy. But, who wouldn’t want to feel again That? Now tennis is on the sidelines until I try to improve my leg. If I succeed, I’ll see,” said Del Potro on the night of Tuesday, February 8, after falling to Federico Delbonis in the first round of the Argentina Open.
Thinking that the match at the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club was the last official match of his career may be a mistake: the 33-year-old from Tandil, now without pressure because he managed to step on a court again, will try to play and have continuity in the coming months . Time will be witness.
A very rare injury
The injury is totally unusual in tennis. At the time, according to doctors and kinesiologists consulted by LA NACION, it is a more common damage in elderly people with osteoporosis who trip and fall on their knees or in young people who have strong impacts in accidents. Taken to sport, they are more common injuries in football, of course.
The man from Tandil underwent his first right knee operation in June 2019, in Barcelona, on the recommendation of Ángel Ruiz-Cotorro, the trusted doctor of Spanish tennis players. In 2021, at the end of January, he entered the operating room again: in Miami, Dr. Lee Kaplan performed an arthroscopic toilet, a kind of “cleansing” of what was wrong in the area. Without the results he expected, in August 2020 the Argentine tennis player underwent knee surgery for the third time. Now it was in Bern, Switzerland, by Dr. Roland Biedert, a professional most trusted by Roger Federer. But still in pain, in March 2021, adding 21 months without competing, he returned to the operating room to try to find solutions for his knee problems. This time in Chicago, before the Argentine doctor Jorge Chahla. “The definitive one,” he wrote on his networks.
In the midst of searching for alternatives, Del Potro traveled to Porto Alegre, to a medical center that prides itself on performing “non-surgical regenerative orthopedic procedures with a revolutionary proposal” and which also treats, for example, the former leader of the Uruguayan soccer Diego Lugano. Del Potro underwent a procedure called BMAC, bone marrow stem cell and growth factor concentrate. It is not the first time that during this traumatic period he has undergone stem cell treatment: Ruiz Cotorro, a doctor at the Royal Spanish Tennis Federation, also underwent it, but the Argentine did not find the results he expected. It is a relatively modern therapy, which does not yet boast the extensive statistics of other treatments and whose effectiveness – many times – depends on “getting the tissue right” in which it is applied.
The total time of his inactivity, if the most severe injuries are added, impacts: 1984 days. That is to say, of his 16 years as a professional, in almost five and a half he was unable to play. Too much torture. However, in Switzerland one last card is played.
THE NATION