Review

Knee stability assessment on anterior cruciate ligament injury: Clinical and biomechanical approaches

Mak-Ham Lam¹ , Daniel TP Fong^1,2 , Patrick SH Yung^1,2 , Eric PY Ho¹ , Wood-Yee Chan³ and Kai-Ming Chan^1,2

¹  Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Prince of Wales Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PR China

²  The Hong Kong Jockey Club Sports Medicine and Health Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PR China

³  School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PR China

author email corresponding author email

Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology 2009, 1:20doi:10.1186/1758-2555-1-20

Published:	27 August 2009

Abstract

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is common in knee joint accounting for 40% of sports injury. ACL injury leads to knee instability, therefore, understanding knee stability assessments would be useful for diagnosis of ACL injury, comparison between operation treatments and establishing return-to-sport standard. This article firstly introduces a management model for ACL injury and the contribution of knee stability assessment to the corresponding stages of the model. Secondly, standard clinical examination, intra-operative stability measurement and motion analysis for functional assessment are reviewed. Orthopaedic surgeons and scientists with related background are encouraged to understand knee biomechanics and stability assessment for ACL injury patients.