COMPARISON BETWEEN MAGNETIC-RESONANCE-IMAGING FINDINGS AND KNEE STABILITY - MEASUREMENTS AFTER ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT REPAIR WITH AND WITHOUT AUGMENTATION - A 5- TO 7-YEAR FOLLOW-UP OF 52 PATIENTS

We compared magnetic resonance imaging findings with knee stability me asurements in a group of 52 patients 5 to 7 years after repair of an a cute anterior cruciate ligament rupture. The patients underwent one of three surgical procedures: nonaugmented repair using the Palmer techn ique, repair with synthetic augmentation, and repair with biologic aug mentation. The appearances of the menisci, subchondral bone, and carti lage were also assessed. Of the patients with clinically stable knees in the nonaugmented repair group, the repaired ligament appeared to be present and intact in 54% (7 of 13) of the patients. In the group wit h the repair augmented with the ligament augmentation device, 33% (4 o f 12) demonstrated repair integrity, whereas in the group with patella r tendon augmentation of the repair, 82% (14 of 17) of the patients wi th clinically stable knees had intact ligaments on magnetic resonance imaging. Twelve patients had new and complete ruptures of one of the m enisci, nine of which occurred in unstable knees. Thirteen patients ha d subcortical bone changes in the femoral condyles. Eight of these kne es had major degenerative cartilage changes overlying the bone changes . Magnetic resonance imaging signals in the repaired ligament augmente d with the patellar tendon were highly predictive of clinical stabilit y, but the integrity of the nonaugmented and ligament augmentation dev ice-augmented anterior cruciate ligament repairs did not closely corre late with the clinical findings.