Arthroscopic repair of "peel-off" lesion of the posterior cruciate ligament at the femoral condyle.

Abstract

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.