Proprioceptive comparison of allograft and autograft anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions

The aim of this study is to search if there is any proprioceptive difference between auto and allograft anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructions, and also to determine if there is any relationship between instrumented anterior knee laxity and proprioception after an ACL reconstruction. The following four groups were constituted for this purpose: group I, control group; group II, autograft reconstructions; group III, allograft reconstructions and group IV, people with injured ACLs. Each group consisted of 20 patients/volunteers. Two subgroups were constituted according to the findings of KT-1000 laxity testing in group II and III; patients/volunteers found to have a laxity of 3 mm or less were enroled in the normal subgroup and those with a laxity of more than 3 mm were enroled in the lax subgroup. Two proprioceptive tests were used: threshold to detect passive motion (TDPM) and joint position sense (JPS) by using Cybex Norm dynamometer. Patients underwent ten tests and the discrepancy in degrees was averaged for ten trials. Comparisons were made to evaluate the proprioceptive differences between groups/subgroups; ANOVA and t test was used for comparisons where appropriate, and the significance was set at P < 0.05. There was a significant difference in degrees between patients with injured ACLs and the other three groups in TDPM evaluations (injured: 1.93° vs. control: 1.03°, autograft: 1.01°, allograft: 0.96°; P < 0.001). Auto and allograft reconstructions were not different from each other and controls. Allo and autograft ACL reconstructions are not different from each other according to proprioceptive measurements. Also, proprioception is not correlated to postoperative anterior knee laxity; many variables involve joint proprioception and mostly the anterior knee laxity may not be the sole determining element, and a lax ACL still may fulfill some of its afferent arc functions as long as it bridges the femur and tibia.