Abstract
Purpose: The aims of this study were to 1) investigate the effects of femoral drilling angle in coronal and sagittal planes on the stress and strain distribution around the femoral and tibial tunnel entrance and the stress distribution on the graft, following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR), 2) identify the optimal femoral drilling angle to reduce the risk of the tunnel enlargement and graft failure. Methods: A validated three-dimensional (3D) finite element model of a healthy right cadaveric knee was used to simulate an anatomic ACLR with the anteromedial (AM) portal technique. Combined loading of 103.0 N anterior tibial load, 7.5 Nm internal rotation moment, and 6.9 Nm valgus moment during normal human walking at joint flexion of 20° was applied to the ACLR knee models using different tunnel angles (30°/45°/60° and 45°/60° in the coronal and sagittal planes, respectively). The distribution of von Mises stress and strain around the tunnel entrances and the graft was calculated and compared among the different finite element ACLR models with varying femoral drilling angles. Results: With an increasing coronal obliquity drilling angle (30° to 60°), the peak stress and maximum strain on the femoral and tibial tunnel decreased from 30° to 45° and increased from 45° to 60°, respectively. With an increasing sagittal obliquity drilling angle (45° to 60°), the peak stress and the maximum strain on the bone tunnels increased. The lowest peak stress and maximum strain at the ACL tunnels were observed at 45° coronal/45° sagittal drilling angle (7.5 MPa and 7,568.3 μ-strain at the femoral tunnel entrance, and 4.0 MPa and 4,128.7 μ-strain at the tibial tunnel entrance). The lowest peak stress on the ACL graft occurred at 45° coronal/45° sagittal (27.8 MPa) drilling angle. Conclusions: The femoral tunnel drilling angle could affect both the stress and strain distribution on the femoral tunnel, tibial tunnel, and graft. A femoral tunnel drilling angle of 45° coronal/ 45° sagittal demonstrated the lowest peak stress, maximum strain on the femoral and tibial tunnel entrance, and the lowest peak stress on the ACL graft.
Highlights
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is one of the most common ligamentous injuries of the knee joint (Griffin et al, 2006)
The aims of this study were to 1) investigate the effects of femoral drilling angle in coronal and sagittal planes on the stress and strain distribution around the bone tunnels and the stress distribution of the graft, following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR), 2) to identify the optimal femoral drilling angle to reduce the risk of the tunnel enlargement and ACL graft failure
The lowest maximum strain of the femoral tunnel entrance was 7,568.3 μ-strain in 45° coronal/ 45° sagittal, whereas the highest maximum strain with 13,570.8 μ-strain occurred in 60° coronal/ 60° sagittal (Table 4)
Summary
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is one of the most common ligamentous injuries of the knee joint (Griffin et al, 2006). ACL reconstruction (ACLR) is the commonly treatment for ACL injuries, with a success rate of up to 90% in knee function at short-term follow-ups (Oiestad et al, 2010). Long-term follow-up studies have reported several complications following ACLR. Xu et al (Xu et al, 2011) found that the rates of tunnel enlargement were 41% around the femoral side and 35% around the tibial side. Previous studies (Weber et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2020a) reported that tunnel enlargement and graft fatigue failure occurred at the bone tunnel aperture, which might be due to high contact stress or strain between the bone tunnel aperture and the graft. Tunnel enlargement and graft fatigue failure raise relevant concerns following ACLR
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