Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears are one of the most common sports injuries requiring surgery in young athletes. Unfortunately, these injuries are also prevalent in your recreational athletes. The acl is responsible for stability of the knee with cutting and pivoting movements. The treatment of acl tears has progressed in orthopaedics from open procedures to arthroscopic assisted acl reconstructions to today’s all arthroscopic acl reconstructions.
Just as surgical techniques have progressed the graft choices have progressed. The traditional graft choice was a bone tendon bone graft. This graft relies on bone to bone fixation. The hamstring tendons offer an alternative to the traditional BTB graft choice. More recently, the quadriceps tendon has become a favored graft choice.
The quadriceps tendon reconstruction offers the advantages of smaller incisions and an all arthroscopic fixation. The incidence of anterior knee pain and decreased flexion strength is less than the previous graft choices but offers the same success rates.
