The first annual workshop for the Pediatric Anterior Cruciate Ligament Initiative (PAMI), 2nd Oct 2020, organized by ESSKA.

The aim of the workshop was to gather PAMI partners as well as interested institutions to discuss the organisational aspects and the future perspectives of the initiative.  

The PAMI aims to collect and analyse data from orthopaedic surgeons who are treating children and adolescents with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury using an international data collection system. Through this initiative, the goal is to improve diagnosis, treatment options, surgical techniques and rehabilitation of pediatric ACL injuries. Presented during the ESSKA conference in Glasgow in May 2018, the ESSKA leadership has placed PAMI under the lead of its Basic Science Committee chaired by Caroline Mouton since May 2020.  

Currently, 6 partner institutions from Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands Norway, and Spain are actively enrolling patients. Since the first inclusion in October 2018, 68 children have been recruited with a continuous increase of inclusion within the last months. The first data shows that the chronological age at injury for this population was in average 12 years of age (from 6 to 17 years of age).  Most injuries occurred while playing football (38%).  At the time of the analysis, 69% were indicated for surgery.  

While several developments were made in the last months to enhance data quality and user’s experience with the PAMI web portal, the preliminary analyses allowed the PAMI steering committee to highlight some technical issues in data consistency, accuracy and completeness. These issues will be specifically targeted within the next months to consolidate the database and provides efficient guidelines to PAMI partners. In 2021, the PAMI managers will also start to provide yearly feedbacks to partner institutions on their data in order to ensure the quality of data and to officially publish the first results of the PAMI. 

Next years will be critical for the PAMI. A request to extend the ethical approval of the project as well as financial supports is foreseen, which also gives the opportunity to evaluate and strengthen the current initiative. During the workshop, inclusion/exclusion criteria were discussed again as well as the possibility to extend the content of data gathered within the project.  

Please be aware that we are still looking for interested partner institutions to join us. If you are an orthopaedic surgeon or a medical doctor treating children and adolescents with ACL injury and are interesting in the PAMI, please contact us at pami@esska.org. We will keep you aware of our next workshop and symposium that we hope to be able to organise during the next ESSKA congress in Milano.  

Detailed information on how to become a PAMI partner is available online on the ESSKA platform; https://www.esska.org/general/custom.asp?page=PAMI  

Thanks to the following partners:  

Smith and Nephew, International Olympic Committee, Luxemburgish Olympic committee, Luxembourg Institute of Health