The effect of Workers' Compensation on clinical outcomes of arthroscopic-assisted autogenous patellar tendon anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in an acute population.

PURPOSE: To assess the effect of Workers' Compensation (WC) benefits on subjective outcomes of patients following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.

TYPE OF STUDY: Prospective study of ACL reconstruction with bone-patellar tendon-bone in an acute population.

METHODS: From October 1991 through June 1997, 1,015 patients underwent ACL reconstruction, 769 with bone-patellar tendon-bone autografts; 235 met the criteria for this study. All chronic injuries, failed and/or bilateral reconstructions were excluded making the total population 139. The final populations included 115 patients in a non-WC group and 24 patients in a WC group. Average follow-up for was 34.5 months for the WC group and 33.6 months for the non-WC group. All patients had equal objective evaluations, which allowed the subjective criteria to be analyzed.

RESULTS: The results revealed a significant difference in the subjective data of patients with WC benefits. Uniformly, WC patients rated subjective criteria as far worse than the non-WC group in postoperative stages. The average of the 15-item visual analog scale showed statistically significant (P <.01) differences between the WC and non-WC groups. Average postoperative Tegner scores were 3.05 for the WC group and 6.02 for the non-WC group, which was statistically significant. The WC group did not return to their preinjury Tegner score.

CONCLUSIONS: The data show that the patients' perception of their knee function drastically differs from the objective findings on examination; therefore, it should be anticipated that the WC patient might have lower subjective outcomes from surgical treatment when compared with their non-WC counterparts.