Surgical Hospital :: Orthopedic Surgery

Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction

Allan Larsen, MD By Dr. Allan Larsen, MD, Ph. D.

When people suffer a knee injury they might rupture their anterior cruciate ligament in the knee.

These patients will suffer from instability/giving away, pain, swelling of the knee, reduced activity level, increased risk of developing osteoarthrosis in the future and especially low quality of life.

Normally some people will be able to rehabilitate themselves by doing exercises but most people will have to be operated upon with a reconstruction of their anterior cruciate ligament.

Until recently these people would have to avoid sports activities for almost a year but now there has been developed a new method for fixation of the tendons used for the operation that actually makes it possible for athletes and physical active patients to rehabilitate within 4 months meaning that contact sport and physical activities is allowed after just 4 months.

When performing the reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament there are several methods to do so, but more than 98 percent is done by either using a hamstrings graft ( two tendons from the inner side of the upper leg) or a Patella-Tendon-Bone graft ( a part of the kneecap with attached tendon and the corresponding attachment on the lower leg). In general more than half of all ACL reconstructions is performed by using the hamstrings graft. Normally this choice of graft has been made to people who did not perform contact sports or did excessive physical activities. The advantage of the hamstrings graft has been that these patients is all capable of laying on their knees opposite most people operated with the PTB graft although it until now has been considered a stronger graft. The normal breaking strength when using the normal hamstrings fixation was 400 Newton, when using Patella-Tendon-Bone grafts (ptb) it was 1.000 Newton but this new method has a breaking strength of 1.427 Newton!!

When combined with the fact that the patients have less postoperative pain and no patella-femoral problems (problems related to the kneecap when using PTB graft) this new method can make patients recover much faster after a knee injury.

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