Predictive factors associated with successfull outcome of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction

Introduction: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction is a common surgery to treat an ACL injury which is indicated for a person to return to sports activity and patient’s with symptomatic knee instability. Several patients’ and injuries’ related prognostic factors before ACL reconstruction (ACLR) have been suggested to be associated with successful outcome. In addition, none of them reported from our region. Objective: This study purpose is to determine factors that may affect the outcome of ACLR in Malaysia. Methodology: This is a cross sectional study of patients with ACL injury treated with ACLR from 2013 to 2016 in two hospitals in Terengganu. The patients’ age, BMI, tobacco use status, occupation and duration of injury to surgery were collected from patient’s data. Patients were interviewed at 18 to 24 months post-surgery using Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) subjective knee form questionnaire to determine the outcome. Results: Forty patients (n = 40, male = 37, female = 3) participated in this study. The mean age was 25.03 years old, range from 17 to 41 years old and the mean BMI was 24.58 kg/m2. The patients consist of 62.5% office workers and 37.5% were field workers. 37.5% of the patients were smoker while 62.5% were non-smoker. Patients performed ACLR at mean of 19.5 months after the injury. There were no or weak correlation in between age, BMI and duration of injury with outcome and there was no significant difference between outcome with tobacco use or occupation. Conclusion: Although other evidences have reported multiple factors associated with successful outcome of ACLR, this study revealed no or weak correlation and no significant difference between factors with successful outcome of ACLR patients in Malaysia