Primary knee ligament repair--revisited.

There were 4710 knee sprains resulting from skiing in the four Aspen ski areas between 1976 and 1979. Twenty percent of the patients (942) had complete tears. Of these, 302 elected to remain in Aspen for treatment. All were treated by primary ligament repair without augmentation. These cases were evaluated an average of 42 months after injury. Patients with isolated tears of the medial collateral ligament were found to be doing well; virtually all of them had returned to preinjury activity levels. Thirty-six percent of the isolated anterior cruciate repairs were rated failures, and 43% of the combination ACL-MCL injuries had failed because of anterior cruciate deficiency. Twenty-nine percent of the ACL and ACL-MCL injuries had meniscal tears. Cases that included meniscectomy had a failure rate twice as great as those in which the meniscus was preserved. The results following repair of anterior cruciate tears were not acceptable, and augmentation was indicated. Primary repair of medial collateral ligament tears produced excellent results. Meniscal tears were frequent in association with ligament disruption. Ligament repairs were less satisfactory when meniscectomy was performed at the time of the repair.