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.