COMPUTER-ASSISTED RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT

Reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament is a delicate task fo r which many different techniques have been proposed, A system consist ing of a computer and a three-dimensional optical sensor is proposed t o help the surgeon control the placement of a graft. This system can b e used to minimize anisometry of the graft and avoid notch impingement . The same system, which had been validated by previous testing on 20 fresh human anatomic specimen knees, was tested on 23 patients who had an anterior cruciate ligament injury, Tunnel placement was performed using the standard technique of Morgan et al and was measured with the computer based system. It was found that all cases had different conf igurations of tibial and femoral placement, The computer based anisome try measurements ranged from 1.9 mm to 8.8 mm in the anterior part of the graft, and from 1 mm to 13 mm in the centers of the tunnels. Using the computer retrospectively, it was possible to find configurations of the graft in all cases that avoid notch impingement, with anisometr y values ranging from 1.3 mm to 3.7 mm, This study shows that a comput er based system can be a useful tool for routine anterior cruciate lig ament reconstruction and can be useful for research purposes.