SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SINGLE-LEGGED HOP TEST TO THE ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT-RECONSTRUCTED KNEE IN RELATION TO MUSCLE STRENGTH AND ANTERIORLAXITY

We investigated the significance of the single-legged hop test to the anterior cruciate ligament-reconstructed knee as it specifically relat es to knee muscle strength recovery and residual anterior laxity. The hop test was conducted on 107 patients with unilateral anterior crucia te ligament-reconstructed knees (78 semitendinosus tendon autografts a nd 29 bone-patellar tendon-bone autografts). Patients were tested an a verage of 2 years after surgery. Correlation coefficient: analyses det ermined whether the relationship between knee muscle strength recovery and the hop test was invariant across all levels of residual anterior laxity and whether the relationship between residual anterior laxity and the hop test was invariant across levels of quadriceps muscle stre ngth recovery. Furthermore, we examined the effect of graft harvest si te on the hop index. Positive correlations were found between the hop index and muscle strength index at all levels of residual anterior lax ity (P < 0.05), but these correlation coefficients were relatively low . There were no apparent correlations between the hop index and residu al anterior laxity at all levels of quadriceps muscle strength recover y. There was no significant difference in the average hop index betwee n the semitendinosus tendon autograft group and the bone-patellar tend on-bone autograft group.