Treatment of Acute ACL Injuries in Young Patients Using a Rebound ACL Brace

This study evaluates the use of a brace in acute anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in children and adolescents. Half of the participants will receive a so called rebound ACL brace together with a standardized rehab program supervised by a physiotherapist, while the other half will receive only the standardized rehab program supervised by a physiotherapist

A well known treatment of posterior cruciate ligament injuries in the acute phase is a brace which pushes the tibia anteriorly, and the result of the treatment is often successful with healing of the ligament. Similarly, in anterior cruciate ligament injuries, it is suggested that a rebound ACL brace which pushes the tibia posteriorly can facilitate healing of the ACL. It does not have as successful treatment results as the PCL brace, but the type and location of the ACL injury has in previous studies not been well defined. We will, after having described the localisation and type of ACL injury treat the intervention group with the rebound ACL brace and a standardized rehab program and the control group with standardized rehab program alone. The randomization is made blockwise of 4, to treatment A= Brace+physiotherapy or B=Physioterapy. The groups are stratified for gender and age (<=14 years and >14 years)

Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries, Anterior Cruciate Ligament Rupture, Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear

The knee laxity measurement with KT-1000 will be performed by an assessor without knowledge of type of intervention. Other outcome measures will not be masked.

The intervention will be the use of rebound ACL brace for 9 weeks, which initially is locked followed by a gradually increased range of motion. A standardized rehab protocol is applied.

The Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score for children, KOOS child. 5 subscales, where each subscale's points are calculated to a scale from 0-100; zero representing extreme knee problems and 100 representing no knee problems

Presented as Tegner activity scale. The Tegner activity scale is a one-item score that graded activity based on work and sports activities on a scale of 0 to 10. Zero represents disability because of knee problems and 10 represents national or international level soccer.

Inclusion Criteria: No previous significant knee injury Trauma followed by hemarthrosis and clinical suspicion of an acute ACL injury Acute ACL rupture seen on MRI Exclusion Criteria: Previous ipsilateral knee surgery Associated injuries which require early surgical intervention

Individual participant data that underlie the results reported in this article, after deidentification (text, tables, figures, and appendices).

Proposals should be directed to frida.hansson@capio.se. To gain access, data requestors will need to sign a data access agreement. Data are available for 5 years at a third party website

Jacobi M, Reischl N, Ronn K, Magnusson RA, Gautier E, Jakob RP. Healing of the Acutely Injured Anterior Cruciate Ligament: Functional Treatment with the ACL-Jack, a Dynamic Posterior Drawer Brace. Adv Orthop. 2016;2016:1609067. doi: 10.1155/2016/1609067. Epub 2016 Dec 7.