ACL injuries in children: Treatment and outcomes-personal experience

Abstract

A rising number of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are seen in children and adolescents, and the management of these injuries is still a matter of debate [4, 8, 25]. In contrary to the skeletally mature patient where arthroscopically intra-articular transphyseal reconstruction techniques are the standard of care, the treatment of ACL instability among skeletally immature patients remains a controversially debated topic surrounding surgical techniques and risks of growth disturbances [4, 10, 15, 17, 23, 34]. In the past decades, nonsurgical treatment of ACL injuries in the immature patients was considered the most appropriate initial approach until skeletally maturity was reached [34]. The rationale of this approach is to allow the physes to close before a surgical intervention primarily because of the fear of possible growth plate damage associated most notably with transphyseal reconstruction techniques [28, 30, 36].