Anterior knee pain after ACL reconstruction: How to avoid it

Abstract

Anterior knee pain (AKP) is a frequent complaint and well-documented problem after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction [1, 10, 11, 14, 17, 19, 20, 22- 24, 27, 28, 30, 33, 41, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52- 58, 61]. AKP is a diagnosis based on symptoms and clinical signs. The severity of pain ranges from a mild nuisance to severe pain that prevents one from performing daily living activities. Thus, depending on pain severity, it could be considered as a complication or a normal postoperative outcome. The presence of AKP can interfere with patient’s satisfaction after ACL reconstruction. In fact, AKP is an outcome predictor after ACL reconstruction. Thus, Bartlett et al. [4] have observed that the grade of patient satisfaction after ACL reconstruction correlates more strongly with the absence of pain than with any other variable assessed. Also, Heijne et al. [20] have shown that a low degree of AKP is the most important predictor for a good clinical outcome 12 months after ACL reconstruction. Therefore, prevention of AKP after ACL reconstruction would be a crucial key for surgery success.