Clinical and radiological long-term results after primary knee ligament surgery.

A total of 77 patients were reviewed 2 to 7 years (average 40 months) after primary operative treatment of an acute knee ligament injury. Fifty percent of the injuries occurred during sports events, the other causes were traffic in 29% of cases and accidents at work, home etc. in 21% of the cases. Cross-country skiing was the cause in half of the sports accidents. There were two annual peaks in the distribution of the injuries: January-March (40% of the cases) and August-October (29%). The total number of operations increased steeply during our observation period; 57% of the operations were performed from 1980 to 1981. The most common types of injury were a combination rupture of the anterior cruciate and the medial collateral ligaments (36% of the cases) and a medial collateral ligament rupture alone (31%). According to the follow-up study, excellent or good results were obtained in 59% of the cases and fair or poor in 41%. The pathological clinical and radiological changes after knee ligament injury accumulated markedly under some specific findings. Characteristic of the patients with excellent healing results was that they were younger, received isolated ligament injury and played a great amount of sport, and of the patients with fair or poor results that they were older, received combined ligament injury, suffered quadriceps muscle atrophy and had diminished sporting activity.