Anatomic ACL reconstruction: The final answer?

Excerpt

In the dark ages of knee instability, (1950–1970s), the majority of orthopedists thought that these were due to either medial or lateral rotatory instability and not due to injury to the anterior cruciate ligament injury and numerous procedures were developed to stabilize the knee. O’Donoghue [23], however, believed that the real culprit was a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Feagin and similarly Marshall later also came to the same conclusion and advocated direct repair of the ACL in acute cases [10, 19]. Our experience at the Naval Academy (1972–1974) with these various chronic reconstructive procedures as well as primary repair yielded very poor results.

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