Knee laxity control in revision anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction versus anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction and lateral tenodesis: clinical assessment using computer-assisted navigation.

BACKGROUND: Rotational laxity control is one of the different options to improve functional results after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Lateral extra-articular tenodesis has been proposed to reduce the rotational laxity, especially in challenging situations such as revision reconstruction after biological failure. We currently lack the practical clinical tools to objectively assess knee rotational laxities.

HYPOTHESIS: Addition of a lateral tenodesis to anatomic single-bundle anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with hamstring tendon graft could improve the knee laxity control, particularly the internal rotation, compared with a standard single-bundle anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.

STUDY DESIGN: Controlled laboratory study.

METHODS: Twenty patients underwent navigated anatomic anteromedial bundle revision anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with addition of percutaneous extra-articular tenodesis using the same hamstring tendon graft. The navigation was used to optimize femoral and tibial tunnel positions and to measure the knee kinematics in response to the anterior drawer test, Lachman test, maximum internal/external rotation test, and pivot-shift test. All patients underwent revision after failure without any technical error found or new trauma. Two sequential reconstruction protocols were used to assess the contribution of the extra-articular tenodesis and single anteromedial bundle anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction to restrain tibial translations and coupled axial rotation occurring with the manually performed clinical laxity tests. In group A, the intra-articular reconstruction was fixed first and then the lateral tenodesis was fixed, and in group B, the protocol was reversed. Measurements were performed before the reconstruction, after the first part was fixed, and after the second part was fixed in each protocol.

RESULTS: At 90° of flexion, addition of lateral tenodesis had a significant effect on coupled internal rotation (P = .003). Addition of the intra-articular reconstruction to lateral tenodesis had a significant effect (P = .001) in reducing anterior tibial translation of the medial compartment, and the effect was also significant (P = .0001) in reduction of lateral compartment translation. For the rotational envelope, lateral tenodesis had a significant effect (P = .0001) in reducing maximum internal rotation at 90° of flexion.

CONCLUSION: Addition of an extra-articular procedure provided no significant improvement to anterior tibial translation and improved internal tibial rotation control only at 90° of flexion.