Miss Amy Garner

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 at the University of 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.

Amy was competitively awarded the prestigious Mid-Career Fellowship from the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre, enabling her to continue her pioneering research. She leads The knee MObility, Balance and stabILITY (MOBILITY) study, an innovatvie study comparing the functional outcomes of partial and total knee replacement in unprecedented detail. Using the vSimulator, the only system of its kind in the UK, her work aims to identify which procedure most closely restores natural knee function. The MOBILITY study has the potential to further our understanding of joint replacement outcomes, impacting upon surgical practice throughout the world. 

More details of the MOBILITY study can be found here: The knee MOBILITY study

Current Societites:

Amy was nominated by senior esteemed surgical colleagues to become a junior memeber to the prestigious and highly competitive European Knee Society. She is also a member of the British Association of Surgery of the Knee and is regularly invited to speak at their annual congress.  

Prizes and Awards: 

• British Association of Surgery of the Knee ‘Best Free Paper’ Annual Conference £1000. May 2021 

• Sam Simmond’s Regional Meeting Prize For “First place podium presentation”. May 2021

• International Society for Technology in Arthroplasty Young Investigator Scholarship, for highly scoring conference abstract. $500. Sept 2019

• British Orthopaedic Research Society / Bone & Joint Research ‘2019 New Investigator Award’ for conference abstract. £500. Aug 2019

• European Knee Society Arthroplasty Conference ‘Best Free Paper’ for Podium Presentation, Valencia, Spain. > 500 submitted abstracts, 80 podium presentations. Prize worth £250. April 2019

• British Association of Surgery of the Knee (BASK) Annual Congress ePoster Prize for best podium with ePoster presentation. £500. March 2019

• Highest Rated Early Career Researcher. IMechE – Engineering the Knee Conference. Dec 2018

Travelling Fellowships

Dr Garner was a 2019 ESSKA/EKA Travelling Fellow. She travelled throughout Europe visiting a number of prestigious institutions to observe and learn advanced soft-tissue knee surgery, arthroplasty and multi-level complex osteotomy techniques

Dr Garner was a 2020 Bone & Joint Research / British Orthopaedic Research Society Travelling Fellow visiting specialist hospitals and universities throughout the East Coast of America, Canada, Phoenix and Denver. Here she spent time with world-leading hip and knee surgeons, scientists and biomechanics engineers. Grants and Awards

Dr Garner's research has been generously supported by the following organisations:

•  NIHR Exeter BRC: (£100,000) 2025 - 2027

• Sir Michael Uren foundation (£150,000). 2017 - 2021

• Dunhill Medical Trust and Royal College of Surgeons of England joint clinical research fellowship £256,000. 2018 - 2021.

• 2018 - 2020 ZimmerBiomet: the biomechanics of partial knee replacement. £130,000. 2018 - 2020

• Smith & Nephew Gait Analysis of the Journey II BCS. £112,000. 2018 - 2021