Abstract
Objective:
Determination of the effectiveness of ACL reconstruction requires outcome measures. Traditionally these have been based on a clinical assessment by the surgeon. The most important outcomes to measure are those that are important to the patient themselves.
Methods:
Over a 5-year period all eligible patients completed a validated ACL-QOL outcome measure. This proved to be a very difficult group to follow with only 22% of eligible patients completing all data forms.
Results:
ACL provided improved function across of categories on 1 year ACL-QOL scores. There remained a significant deficit to a “normal” knee score.
Conclusion:
Highlighting the importance of prospective data collection, patients had worse retrospective scores at 1 year than they had prospectively.