A 12-year-old girl from Lunéville, France, was able to undergo a rare meniscus transplant at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL) after weeks of struggle due to a procedure being unavailable in France.
In the week of 4 September, 12-year-old Louise-Fleur travelled from France to the CHL for an exceptionally rare meniscus transplant. No specialist in France was able to carry out the procedure, making Luxembourg the only option.
The road to surgery was long, as the French health insurance system initially refused to cover the operation abroad. The matter escalated so far that the French Presidency itself intervened following a letter to President Emmanuel Macron.
Ahead of the surgery, Louise-Fleur and her mother Charlotte Perrot attended the CHL for final tests and preparations. Due to a congenital knee anomaly, the girl from Lunéville had her meniscus removed at an early age, leaving her daily life heavily restricted, Perrot explained.
Perrot said her daughter could no longer walk for more than half an hour, often needing to sit down after just ten or 15 minutes, and suffered significant knee pain that limited her ability to play and live like any other child. A transplant was therefore essential, but the procedure is so rare it could not be performed in France.
Dr Romain Seil, orthopaedics specialist at CHL, received the referral. He explained that French hospitals could not offer the surgery for several reasons: there were no paediatric orthopaedic surgeons in France trained to perform meniscus transplants, a highly specific and minimally invasive technique, and a new law prohibited adult surgeons from operating on children within their own facilities. As a result, Louise-Fleur had effectively fallen into a legal and medical gap, Dr Seil explained.
The French health insurance fund initially refused to authorise treatment abroad, arguing that an equivalent operation could be offered in France within a reasonable timeframe. Several doctors, however, confirmed this was not the case. After weeks of back-and-forth, Perrot went public and even wrote directly to President Macron.
She recounted that the Presidency had ordered officials to review the case urgently, and within an hour she had received a call from the deputy director of the Health Care Insurance Fund (CPAM) in Meurthe-et-Moselle confirming that, on an exceptional basis, permission had been granted for her daughter to be operated on in Luxembourg on 4 September by Professor Seil.
Dr Seil carried out the surgery at the CHL, which was reported to have gone well. Perrot described the outcome as a relief and a joy, the result of a long battle that had finally ended in success.
