Emrah KOVALAK, TOLGA ATAY, CEM ÇETİN, I Meltem ATAY, Mustafa Onur SERBEST

Is ACL reconstruction a prerequisite for the patients having recreational sporting activities

Objective: Whether surgical or conservative treatment is more effective in allowing patients to return tophysical activity after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is controversial. We sought to compare midterm outcome measures between isolated ACL tear patients who underwent reconstruction followed byclosed kinetic chain exercises and those who underwent neuromuscular training only.Methods: We retrospectively evaluated patients with ACL tears who underwent post-surgery CKCstrength training after ACL reconstruction (Group A), and patients who only underwent neuromusculartraining (Group B) with a minimum follow-up time of 5 years. Surgical techniques, rehabilitation,assessment of subjective knee function, one-leg hop test, assessment of joint position sense, musclestrength, and the health proŞle of the patient were evaluated.Results: Overall, 43 patients were included in Group A (mean age, 32.56± 4.89; Tegner activity scale, 5)and 39 patients in Group B (31.67± 7.27; 5). Patients in both groups returned to their regular physicalactivity level after a similar time frame (Group A: average, 12 months; Group B, average, 13.4 months). Themean Lysholm knee score was 88.52± 7.65 in Group A and 86.21 ± 13.72 in Group B. Mean distances forthe one-leg hop test for Group A were 135.21± 31.66 and 145.36 ± 42.10 mm in the reconstructed anduninjured knees, respectively. In Group B, the mean hop distances were 132.47± 28.13 and147.89± 21.45 mm in the rehabilitated and uninjured knees, respectively. No statistical difference wasobserved between the groups for any of the parameters evaluated, including assessment of subjectiveknee function, one-leg hop test, assessment of joint position sense, muscle strength, and the health proŞle.Conclusion: Our data suggest that early surgical reconstruction may not be a prerequisite to returning torecreational physical activities after injury in patients with ACL tears.Level of evidence: Level IV, therapeutic study.© 2017 Turkish Association of Orthopaedics and Traumatology. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This isan open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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