Return to Sport After Multiligament Knee Injury: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Purpose: The objective of this study was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of MLKI outcome studies in order to ascertain the overall rates of return to sport following MLKI.

Methods: A systematic review was conducted based on the PRISMA guidelines. Quality assessment of the systematic review was performed using the MINORS Score. The following search terms were browsed in the title, abstract, and keyword fields: "multiligament knee" or "MLKI" AND "return to sport" or "sports activity" or "athletes" or "sports" or "sportsman". The resulting measures extracted from the studies were the rate of RTS, level of RTS, complications, revision surgery, Tegner, International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) Lysholm and anterior cruciate ligament-return to sport after injury (ACL-RSI).

Results: A total of 439 patients were included in the study, of whom 383 (87.2%) were male and 56 (22.8%) were female. The mean age at surgery was 28.06 ± 8.93 years. The mean time from injury to surgery was 97.68 ± 127.81 weeks, while the mean follow-up was 42.83 ± 39.22 months. Of 312 patients who completed the follow-up and reported to be sportsmen before surgery, 184 (58.97%) returned to the same or higher pre-injury level, 58 (18.58%) returned to a lower level, while 69 (22.11%) did not return to sports activity. The author analysed the Tegner score in three studies and noted a decrease compared to the pre-injury level (from 7.12 ± 0.8 pre-injury to 4.59 ± 0.57 at the final follow-up; p < 0.001). At the final follow-up, 4 studies analysed IKDC with a mean value of 75.14 ± 9.6, 3 reported a mean Lysholm of 51.81 ± 27.6, and two reported a mean ACL-RSI of 64.82 ± 0.149. Among the 439 patients, a total of 90 (20.5%) complications/re-operations were reported, while a total of 29 (6.6%) failures were recorded.

Conclusions: Return to sport after MLKI occurs in approximately 75% of surgically treated patients, though return to high-level sport is about 60% of the patients. Furthermore, one in five patients report complications, while the failure rate is relatively low (< 7%).

Level of evidence: Systematic review of level 4.