The methods of quantifying knee laxity in the ACL injured population: A review.

INTRODUCTION

Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries equate to a large proportion of Emergency Department attendances worldwide and continue to place significant burden on primary care services. Diagnosis of this injury relies on subjective physical examination tests such as the Lachman's and Pivot Shift test; results of which can vary depending on clinician experience and individual interpretation.

AIMS: This review seeks to identify current approaches past and present to objectively measuring knee laxity caused by ACL injury and appraise the methods of the current apparatus' available to do this within the clinical setting.

METHODS

A literature search across three databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL) was conducted, and an inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to the 780 retrieved texts to extract 19 papers fulfilling this objective. Articles published after the year 2000 were considered. The main technologies noted that quantified knee laxity were arthrometry devices, inertial motion units (IMUs), electromagnetic measurement systems (EMS), optical motion capture systems (OMC), and dynamic MRI.

CONCLUSION

Despite there being a multitude of technologies with capability to accurately measure aspects of knee laxity, there is no agreed objective measure for doing so in the clinical setting. This highlights a need for improved collaboration between the relevant stakeholders to achieve this aim.