Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center

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Information about project titled 'Double-bundle reconstructions in Scandinavia, a register study of 60,775 patients.'

Double-bundle reconstructions in Scandinavia, a register study of 60,775 patients.

Details about the project - category Details about the project - value
Project status: Published
Project manager: Cathrine Aga
Supervisor(s): Lars Engebretsen

Description

Introduction: The injury of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is a relatively common injury among the young and healthy population. In Norway, almost 2,000 patients have their ACL  reconstructed each year. Reports state that there is a subset of patients who remain unstable and only 60% are able to regain prior function after surgery. Additionally, it has been reported that degenerative joint disease can develop in up to 50% of those patients at long-term follow up. The  “Double-bundle” ACL reconstruction was developed to improve these results. Clinical and subjective outcome after Double-bundle ACL reconstruction, has shown minimal improvement compared to the traditional Single-bundle reconstruction. The failure outcome looking at the risk of re-rupturing the graft has not been thoroughly investigated.

After primary ACL reconstructions, 2-20 % of the patients are exposed to graft re-rupturing and some of those patients go further and have a new reconstruction: an “ACL revision”. In Scandinavia all ACL revisions are registered in the Knee Ligament registers. With this study we wanted to compare the ACL revision rates between Double-bundle and Single-bundle patients recorded in three national registers in Scandinavia.


Method: 60,775 patients with an ACL reconstruction from Norway, Sweden or Denmark were included in the study. Almost 1,000 patients were reconstructed with the Double-bundle technique.


Results: 4.4% of the patients in the Double-bundle group and 4.4% in the Single-bundle group had undergone revision surgery during the study period. There was no difference in the risk of revision between the two groups.


Conclusion: In this prospective cohort following almost 1,000 Double bundle ACL reconstructed patients, there was no difference in the risk of revision between the Double- and Single bundle reconstruction technique.