Anterior cruciate ligament injury affects roughly 120 000 athletes in the United States
every year. One of the most common techniques is the use of a bone-patellar tendon-bone
graft. Graft harvest creates a sizeable defect in the remaining patellar tendon. Closure
of this defect is based on surgeon preference. To date there has been no study on
the effects of defect closure on the mechanical properties of remaining donor patellar
tendon. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of closure on both the
strength and stiffness of the remaining patellar tendon. 7 pairs of fresh frozen cadaver
patellar tendons were matched by tendon dimensions. Bone-patellar tendon-bone grafts
were harvested from all of the specimens and then half of the paired tendons underwent
defect closure. All of the donor tendons were then tested in a servohydraulic load
frame to failure at a constant displacement rate at room temperature. This study found
no differences in the load at failure, the engineering failure stress, stiffness or
in the engineering modulus between the donor tendons that underwent defect closure
versus those that did not.
Key words
anterior cruciate ligament - reconstruction - bone-patellar tendon-bone graft
