Posterior cruciate ligament injury: Diagnosis, treatments and rehabilitation strategies / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: With the increasing cases of posterior cruciate ligament injury, there are endless protocols for diagnosing and treating posterior cruciate ligament injury. However, there are few reviews of the integrity of posterior cruciate ligament. OBJECTIVE: To complete a comprehensive review of posterior cruciate ligament injury in terms of anatomy, clinical manifestations, auxiliary examination, treatment methods and rehabilitation strategies. METHODS: The PubMed, Ovid, CKNI, and WanFang databases were retrieved using the key words of “posterior cruciate ligament, PCL, anatom*, diagnos*, treatments, surger*, rehabilitation.” A total of 223 articles were searched. After removal of repetitive and ineligible literature, 65 articles were included for review. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis of posterior cruciate ligament injury certainly exist. Posterior cruciate ligament injuries are mostly caused by traffic injuries and sports injuries, and are accompanied by other structural injuries to a certain degree. A full understanding of patient’s medical history, accurate physical examination methods, and sophisticated auxiliary examinations can help to correctly identify injuries to the posterior cruciate ligament and the surrounding structures, so as to formulate a reasonable diagnosis and treatment protocol. Research suggests that patients with posterior cruciate ligament injury should be subjected to reconstruction of the posterior cruciate ligament as soon as possible to reduce the risk of further degeneration. At present, there are still large disagreements on the diagnosis, treatment methods, and rehabilitation strategies of posterior cruciate ligament injury. So, a large number of rigorous randomized controlled trials are urgently needed to select the most suitable diagnosis and treatment methods.