Length changes of knee lateral collateral ligaments following anterior cruciate ligament injury / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Lateral collateral ligaments play an important role in maintaining knee stability.Motion reduction of knee joint can be realized and the changes laws of medial and lateral collateral ligaments' length after anterior cruciate ligament(ACL)injury during weight-bearing flexion can be obtained via 2D/3D image registration technique.OBJECTIVE: To study in vivo stability of length changes of the medial and lateral collateral ligaments of ACL injury knee during weight-bearing flexion.METHODS: Eight volunteers with unilateral ACL rupture and contralateral normal knees,was captured CT images and 2orthogonal images of the knee at 0,15°,30°,60°,and 90° of weight-bearing flexion.These orthogonal images were used to recreate the in vivo knee positions at each of the targeted flexion angles by the method of 2D/3D image registration.Through the bone insertion of medial and lateral collateral ligaments,the elongation changes of medial and lateral collateral ligaments were obtained.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: At 0°,15° and 30°,the length of medial collateral ligament of ACL injury knees was longer than normal knees,but the lateral collateral ligaments length of ACL injury knee was shorter than that of normal knees.All the differences have statistical significances(P < 0.05).The findings demonstrated that,at 0°,15° and 30°,the medial collateral ligament length of ACL injury knees was longer than normal knees,but lateral collateral ligaments length of ACL injury knees was shorter than normal knees.