Anterior cruciate ligament function after tibial eminence fracture in skeletally mature patients.

We compared anterior cruciate ligament function in skeletally mature patients after treatment of tibial eminence fractures with that of patients in two other groups: patients who had anterior cruciate ligament deficiency and patients who had undergone anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction using bone-patellar tendon-bone autografts. The Lysholm questionnaire was used to evaluate symptoms and KT-1000 arthrometry was used to determine objective knee laxity at an average follow-up of 5.2 years. Knee joint proprioception was assessed with a new method designed to test joint position sense. The Lysholm score for the tibial eminence group was 94 +/- 7. Only the patients in the anterior cruciate ligament-deficient group demonstrated statistically significantly increased laxity and inferior proprioception when the injured leg was compared with the uninjured leg. Both laxity and proprioception were statistically inferior for the anterior cruciate ligament-deficient group when compared with both the treated tibial eminence fracture group and the anterior cruciate ligament-reconstructed group. No statistically significant difference was observed between the anterior cruciate ligament-reconstructed and treated tibial eminence fracture groups. Correlation was observed between laxity and proprioception when all patients were analyzed. The results demonstrate that appropriate treatment of tibial eminence fractures restores stability and proprioception to the knee.