You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Editorial
Why all the fuss about paediatric ACL rupture: isn’t the meniscus much more important?
  1. Nicholas Mohtadi1,
  2. Clare L Ardern2,
  3. Lars Engebretsen3
  1. 1 Department of Surgery, University of Calgary Sport Medicine Centre, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
  2. 2 Division of Physiotherapy, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
  3. 3 Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
  1. Correspondence to Dr Nicholas Mohtadi, University of Calgary Sport Medicine Centre, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada; mohtadi{at}ucalgary.ca

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2018-099169

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    When Ava, a 13-year-old basketball player, tried to change direction quickly to drive past her opponent, her knee buckled and she developed an acute haemarthrosis. Ava saw a general practitioner and a physiotherapist who advised her to ice her knee and regain her motion. She initially improved, obtained an over-the-counter brace and returned to playing basketball. The full extent of her injury was not recognised. Ava had weekly episodes of knee giving way when playing basketball and stopped playing her favourite sport. She continued to have a feeling of instability, swelling and pain with her daily activities.

    Four months after her injury, MRI of Ava’s knee confirmed the ACL rupture and a lateral meniscal tear. By the time she had a surgical appointment and an arthroscopy her lateral meniscus was almost absent; nothing separated the lateral femoral condyle and the adjacent tibial plateau (figure 1). We will never know the extent of the original injury to Ava’s lateral meniscus. However, we might suspect that the lack of early and specific recognition of the problem and the subsequent recurrent giving way episodes aggravated meniscal damage.

    Figure 1

    Lateral compartment of the knee with only a small …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors contributed in an equally important manner to this manuscript.

    • Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Detail has been removed from this case description/these case descriptions to ensure anonymity. The editors and reviewers have seen the detailed information available and are satisfied that the information backs up the case the authors are making.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    Linked Articles