Dr Amy Garner is a Consultant Orthopaedic and Trauma surgeon with a sub-specialist interest of partial, total and complex revision surgery of the knee. She works in the internationally respected Exeter Knee Reconstruction Unit, part of the Royal Devon University Hospitals NHS Trust. Amy also has a busy trauma practise covering the scope of adult and children’s trauma, with a specialist focus on acute knee injuries.

Amy trained as a doctor in Oxford, placing first in the Year 4 Surgical Examinations. She later completed a multi-award winning PhD at Imperial College, London. Her research investigated tissue-preserving knee replacement surgery. Specifically, she questioned whether two smaller ‘partial’ knee replacements could be used in different areas of the arthritic knee, preserving the remaining healthy bone, cartilage and important ligaments. Amy compared the function and biomechanics of these knee replacement constructs to ‘total knee replacement’, which traditionally requires removal of all cartilage in the knee, and the all important anterior cruciate ligament.

As a Mid-Career Fellow, at the University of Exeter, Amy is taking functional research of knee replacement to an unprecedented level. Using the pioneering ‘vSim’ research facility, Amy is investigating partial Vs total knee replacement performance when patients undertake complex movements like pivoting, walking on un-even ground or when jolted, much like one might experience if walking on a moving train. She aims to understand multi-directional movement, ‘fear of falling’, the stress-response to unpredictable motion and the kinematics of partial with total knee replacement. With this knowledge, Amy and her research team aim to optimise post-operative performance and function in the treatment of end-stage osteoarthritis of the knee.