Iker Casillas successfully underwent surgery to realign the fracture he suffered at the base of the first metacarpal in his left hand in the second leg of the cup quarter-final against Valencia. The operation, carried out in the Madrid hospital Beata Maria Ana de Jesus by Dr. Miguel del Cerro, took just over an hour and following it Carlos Diez, chief of medical services at Real Madrid-Sanitas, explained how it went. When we spoke with him we knew of all of the results of his previous surgeries and he offered us all the guarantees that allowed us to put Iker Casillas, the Real Madrid and the Spanish national team goalkeeper, in his hands".
He also spoke about Iker Casillas’ rehabilitation process of: "We will follow the steps recommended for the rehabilitation by Dr. Del Cerro, who was the surgeon that carried out the procedure on the player and who knows what condition his is in to be able to proceed with it. But there is a standard protocol that means there will be some immobilisation in the process, a passive recovery and a progressive build up of activity over time".
Dr. Miguel del Cerro confirmed that the Whites’ captain will spend the night in the hospital: "He will spend the night here, tomorrow morning I will come and give him a check-up, which will be a control x-ray and then he will be able to go home. The operation consisted of a realignment of the fracture and joining of the fragments that had been separated with two screws, which were necessary. Two was enough. No operations are simple, they can all be complicated. In this case there was nothing complicated, everything went very well".
In terms of the rehabilitation process that Casillas will have to go through, Del Cerro said: "Now he will have a very short spell with a splint on, which will immobilise it and allow the scar to heel. Then he will begin with aided passive movements, then active movements and finally with contact, which we will advise the physios and rehabilitation team on".
