Surgery for footballer Aleksandar Duric goes smoothly

By Les Tan

Friday, December 12, 2008 – National footballer Aleksandar Duric, 38, successfully underwent surgery yesterday morning at Gleneagles Hospital on his fractured fibula. The operation was conducted by Dr Patrick Goh and lasted less than 30 minutes.

Aleks was injured in his first game of the ASEAN Football Championship (Suzuki Cup) against Cambodia when a Cambodian player came in with a hard tackle and the first-choice striker went down in the 56th minute.

“We’ll know in one or two weeks if surgery was a success,” said Aleks. Aleks was put under local anaesthesia and was awake throughout the operation. The surgery required taking out his plasma, mixing it with a serum and then injecting it into the fracture to fill up the crack and speed up the healing.

He scored two goals in the last warm up game against Malaysia which ended in a 2-2 draw and won the S.League Player of the Year award. He also finished as the top scorer in the S.League with 28 goals for Singapore Armed Forces FC.

The average healing time for such a fracture is 4-6 weeks although recovery depends a lot on the athlete’s age and previous conditioning.

“I am setting myself a comeback date of January 15th,” said Aleks who begins physiotherapy rehabilitation work tomorrow at Mt Alvernia Hospital.