Two-stage reconstruction with autografts for knee dislocations

Traumatic knee dislocations are severe injuries that involve damage to the anterior cruciate ligament, the posterior cruciate ligament, and the lateral or medial ligamentous structures. There are no established methods of treatment. The objective of the current study was to report the clinical outcome of a two-stage autologous reconstruction on nine knees (eight patients). The mean followup was 40.1 months. The first stage of the reconstruction was done at a mean of 2 weeks after the injury, and the posterior cruciate ligament was reconstructed by an arthroscopically assisted technique using contralateral autogenous hamstring tendon as the graft material. Three months later, the second stage of the reconstruction was done for the ligaments that had not healed with conservative treatment. Arthroscopically assisted anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction was done on all of the knees using the ipsilateral autogenous hamstring tendon or bone-patellar tendon-bone as the graft material. At the same time, a medial collateral ligament reconstruction using an autogenous semitendinosus tendon was done on one knee, and reconstruction of the posterolateral ligamentous structures using a biceps tendon was done on three knees. Each of the knees that was reconstructed was capable of full extension, and the mean degree of passive flexion was 139.5 degrees +/- 5.2 degrees. The mean side-to-side difference in anteroposterior total laxity (KT-1000 arthrometer, manual maximum) was 2.3 +/- 1.9 mm. None of the knees had lateral or medial instability. All of the injured ligaments were able to be reconstructed with autografts, and severe contracture was able to be prevented. A good clinical outcome can be achieved when two-stage reconstruction is used for traumatic knee dislocations.