Clinical and Functional Outcome of All-Inside Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction at A Minimum of 2 Years' Follow-Up

Purpose: To evaluate the clinical and functional outcomes for anatomic anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction using the all-inside technique with a minimum follow-up of 24 months. Methods: Patients undergoing anatomic ACL reconstruction via the all-inside technique between January 2011 and October 2012 were reviewed for inclusion in this study. Functional outcome measures, including the Lysholm score, International Knee Documentation Committee score, visual analog scale score, and Tegner Activity Scale, were used to evaluate outcomes before surgery and at 3, 6, 12, and > 24 months. At final follow-up, anteroposterior knee stability was assessed with KT-2000 (MEDmetric, San Diego, CA) measurements. Results: Of the 92 patients who underwent primary all-inside ACL reconstruction, 79 patients returned to final follow-up with a minimum of 2 years. There were 53 men and 26 women with a mean age of 29 years (range, 18 to 54 years) and a mean follow-up of 29 months (range, 24 to 45 months). The International Knee Documentation Committee score (44.6 v 89.7, P < .0001), Lysholm score (53.4 v 93.1, P < .001), visual analog scale score (5 v 0.1, P < .001), and Tegner activity score (2 v 6, P < .001) showed a significant improvement between baseline and final clinical follow-up. The mean side-to-side KT-2000 difference at final follow-up was 1.7mm (range; 0 to 6 mm). Overall 10 patients (12.7%) sustained an ACL graft rerupture after a mean of 17.6 months (range, 6.9 to 28.6 months). Conclusions: The current data support our first hypothesis that primary anatomic ACL reconstruction using the all-inside technique leads to improved functional outcomes between baseline and clinical follow-up at 24 months. Further, there was no difference in knee stability between the ACL reconstructed-and the contralateral normal knee at 24 months, which confirms our second hypothesis.