Saints' Tracy Porter Recovering From Offseason Knee Surgery, Possibly Microfracture

Saints' Tracy Porter Recovering From Offseason Knee Surgery, Possibly Microfracture

Tracy Porter was the hero of the Saints' victory in Super Bowl 44, snatching a Peyton Manning pass and returning it for New Orleans' game-sealing score. But Porter couldn't sustain that success in 2010, missing games due to a knee sprain. If Porter's trainer's suspicions are correct, that's because he sustained an injury severe enough to require microfracture surgery.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune caught up with Wyatt Harris, who has trained Porter and other Saints during the NFL lockout, and Harris told the paper's Mike Triplett that the surgery Porter had after the 2010 season included a microfracture procedure in his left knee.

Microfracture surgery is one of the sports medicine world's newer surgical techniques: to stimulate cartilage growth, tiny fractures are made in bones, forming a "super clot." The procedure has become more popular after NBA players like Allan Houston, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Tracy McGrady recovered from knee surgery with the aid of microfracture.

The timetable for Porter's recovery is not clear, but Harris suggested that he was "ahead of schedule."

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