Acute anterior cruciate ligament injury and repair reinforced with a biodegradable intraarticular ligament. Experimental studies.

The anterior cruciate ligament was transected at the femoral origin in the knee joint of 12 dogs. The ligaments were repaired in a conventional manner and reinforced with a polyglycolic acid (PGA) ligament of braided Dexon (Davis & Geck, Pearl River, NJ) suture. At two weeks the PGA ligament was still providing excellent support for the healing anterior cruciate ligament, and there was no synovitis within the knee joint. After five weeks, initial healing had firmly attached the repaired anterior cruciate ligament to the femoral condyle, and the PGA ligament had resorbed without inflammatory or fibrotic response. All repaired and reinforced ligaments in this series healed and provided functional stability to the knee joints. Biomechanical testing of the repaired anterior cruciate ligaments at four months produced a maximum strength of 54.2 +/- 6.3 kgf. Sulfur-35 uptake showed viable active collagen-producing cells in the repaired ligaments four months postoperatively. Thus, the biodegradable PGA ligament reinforced and splinted successfully the repaired anterior cruciate ligament.