When his wife asked him recently about the best part of his job as an orthopedic surgeon, Gene Barrett, MD, gave a simple answer.

“You get free tickets to the games,” said Barrett, whose practice covers ballgames at a host of schools and colleges around central Mississippi.

While his work at the Jackson-based Mississippi Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center allows him to plumb the research depths of his specialty area —the knee’s anterior cruciate ligament — as well as to train the next generation of surgeons, it also promises the thrill of the game.

“I love all the sports and the kids,” he said. “I got into this practice through playing sports, then trying to help kids out. The tickets are a perk.”

A native of McComb, Barrett played basketball at Southwest Mississippi Community College and has enjoyed athletics all his life.

He attended Millsaps College before entering the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1974. He went on to complete a general surgery internship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and a residency in orthopedic surgery at the Greenville Hospital System in Greenville, S.C.

Barrett completed a fellowship in sports medicine and knee surgery at the Hughston Orthopaedic Clinic in Columbus, Ga., under one of the pioneers of sports medicine, Jack Hughston, MD.

“We would see all kinds of professional athletes,” said Barrett, who has also had the opportunity to treat well-known athletes during his career in Mississippi. Among them, the wrestler and actor known as André the Giant.

“He was just so big, his knees couldn’t hold up,” said Barrett, who operated on André at River Oaks Hospital in Flowood in 1992.

Barrett had been referred to him by his friend Ted DiBiase of Clinton, known to wrestling fans as “The Million-Dollar Man,” who was also a patient of Barrett’s.

“It was a challenge,” Barrett said of André’s knee procedure. “It was scary, because I wanted him to do well. He was a very nice guy.”

During his training, Barrett treated Swiss soccer and ski teams as part of an AO International fellowship in Basel, Switzerland. His fellowship under Hughston had him working with athletic teams at Auburn University.

Today, Barrett focuses his practice on ACL surgery and other advanced knee procedures. He is board certified in orthopedic surgery, and his extensive published clinical research has focused on the ACL.

“The ACL is such a disabling injury,” he said. “When you plant your leg and cut your knee, it almost dislocates. If you go back to playing basketball, it’s going to give way and you’ll hit the floor.”

Barrett’s current research has focused on the success of allografts in young, active patients, undermining a trend toward using cadaver tendons in more and more cases.

“It’s a little bit controversial,” he said. “More and more people are using allografts, because they’re easy to get and easy to do, and you don’t have to sacrifice the patient’s tendon. But if you do it in a young athlete, you’ve got a pretty good chance of them rupturing the thing.”

For a study recently published in the journal Arthroscopy, Barrett and his research team studied the outcomes of about 80 active patients under age 40. They were compared to a control group of about five times as many patients who also underwent ACL reconstruction, but using their own tendons rather than a donor’s.

The allograft patients were 2.6 to 4.2 times as likely to need the surgery done again.

“With the allografts, the patients feel so good so early, they stress it before they should,” Barrett said. “If you’re an older person playing weekend tennis, that’s one thing. But if you’re going to be playing football or basketball, you’ve got a good chance you’ll need revision surgery.”

Barrett’s research in ACL reconstruction over the years has considered a variety of different patient groups and techniques, looking at how the over-40 population responds to allograft versus autograft ACL reconstruction, as well as differences between how males and females respond.

“Primarily, the goal of our research is to look at our practice and see what we’re doing right and wrong,” he said. “It also helps the fellows — future sports-medicine physicians — to learn something new.”

Mississippi Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center offers year-long positions for five fellows through its Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy Fellowship program, approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Barrett is one of three MSMOC physicians who lead the lower-extremity portion of the program as teaching instructors. The fellows take part in clinical office assessments, on-field athletic evaluations and surgical operations.

Barrett has been a partner in MSMOC since 1984. He has also served as a clinical instructor in the UMMC departments of orthopedics and family medicine since the late 1980s.

As one of the co-directors of his practice’s Mississippi Sports Medicine Foundation, Barrett oversees a program to provide health insurance for indigent athletes, scholarships for athletic trainers and continuing education programs at junior colleges.

Barrett is a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American College of Sports Medicine and the ACL Study Group, among other professional organizations.

He has served as president of the Mississippi Orthopaedic Society, the Hughston Society and the Stelling Orthopedic Society. Recent honors include being added to the Mississippi Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame in 2008, and being named the Jack Hughston Sports Medicine Person of the Year in 2009.

When he’s not in the clinic or operating room – or on the sidelines at his choice of area athletic events – Barrett enjoys duck hunting each winter at Fighting Bayou, a prime hunting spot in the Mississippi Delta.

He and his wife, Linda, a former special-education teacher, have two sons: Austin, a fourth-year orthopedic surgery resident, and David, who works in television advertising sales.

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