Multiligament Knee Injury – Clinical Summary

Hands grasping a sore knee

This week, an interesting (albeit uncommon) sports-med injury…

Multiligament knee injuries (MLKI) have been defined as a tear of two or more of the major knee ligaments: anterior cruciate ligament (ACL); posterior cruciate ligament (PCL); posteromedial corner (PMC), including the medial collateral ligament MCL; and the posterolateral corner (PLC), including the lateral collateral ligament (LCL). If misdiagnosed or inappropriately treated, the prognosis for this sort of injury is poor and associated with both chronic knee dysfunction and post-traumatic knee arthritis.

As MLKI are less frequent than single ligament knee injuries, there is a paucity of appropriately powered prospective studies to provide an evidence-based approach to diagnosis and management. As such, the objective of this study was to establish expert consensus on the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of MLKI.

From Dr. Thistle:

As a chiropractor (or other manual therapy clinician), you may never see a patient with this sort of injury (and, you hopefully never sustain one yourself!). With that in mind, I think it is important that we all maintain a working knowledge of ‘best practices’ for these injuries, which in this paper are derived from international expert consensus via delphi methodology.

This week’s Research Review: “Multiligament Knee Injury – Clinical Summary”

This paper was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (2024)

You can now purchase single Research Reviews for only $4.99 – Get access to this review here

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