The modern-day ACL surgeon’s armamentarium should include multiple surgical approaches – Letter to the Editor

Following publication of a recent ACL survey, multi-authors, including Professor Mackay write that future surveys include a “complete representation of the surgical (primary repair, augmentation, and reconstruction), and non-surgical options to treat the ACL injured patient”.This open letter to the Editor was published in ISAKOS Journal

Read the full Letter here with links to all reference articles

Extract: We would like to thank the authors for their highly valuable publication and would commend them for conducting the largest ACL survey performed to date, including over 2000 ISAKOS sport surgeons. The study illuminates current trends in ACL reconstruction (ACLR) surgery and highlights the variation in techniques used depending on a surgeon’s location and expertise

Hereby we would like to provide our critique on both the chosen title and methods used. We strongly believe that the ‘benchmark’ in today’s ACL surgery is not solely represented by ACLR, but rather by a patient-individualized decision process that considers the complete, modern day ACL surgery toolkit (e.g. primary ACL repair, augmentation, and reconstruction).

The authors of this letter are aware of the ongoing reluctance towards primary ACL repair within today’s orthopedic sports medicine and trauma community. This approach had been abandoned after historical open ACL repair techniques were reported to have high failure and complication rates at mid-term follow-up…………..