Arthroscopic Repair of “Peel-Off” Lesion of the Posterior Cruciate Ligament at the Femoral Condyle

• Main Authors: Federica Rosso, M.D., Salvatore Bisicchia, M.D., Annunziato Amendola, M.D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2014-02-01
• Series: Arthroscopy Techniques
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212628713001187

Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injuries are uncommon, and most occur in association with other lesions. The treatment of PCL injuries remains controversial; in addition, PCL injuries have been documented to have a propensity to heal. In the literature several different patterns of PCL injury have been described including midsubstance tears/injuries, tibial bony avulsions, femoral bony avulsions, and femoral “peel-off” injuries. A peel-off injury is a complete or incomplete soft-tissue disruption of the PCL at its femoral attachment site without associated bony avulsion. In recent years arthroscopic repair of femoral avulsion and peel-off lesions of the PCL has been reported. In most of these articles, a transosseous repair with sutures passed through 2 bone tunnels into the medial femoral condyle has been described. We present a case of a femoral PCL avulsion in a 20-year-old collegiate football player with an associated medial collateral ligament injury, and we report about a novel technique for PCL repair using 2 No. 2 FiberWire sutures and two 2.9-mm PushLock anchors (Arthrex) to secure tensioning the ligament at its footprint.