Introduction:

Due to the inherent activities of the active duty personnel of the Mexican Navy, ligament injuries are constant, particularly the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee (ACL). Currently, we have various techniques and resources for its repair.

Objective:

identify the clinical results obtained in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in active military.

Material and methods:

retrospective observational study comparing clinical outcomes of anterior cruciate ligament repair in active military with the use of allograft and autograft in 23 patients who met inclusion criteria for the surgical procedure from 2017 to 2019 at the Naval Medical Center. 23 patients (46 in total) were considered for each category of anterior cruciate ligament repair with autologous graft (contralateral patellar) and heterologous graft (cadaveric anterior cruciate ligament). With an average age of autologous (35.6 years), heterologous (35 years). BMI average: autologous (26.5), heterologous (26.5). Male gender in its entirety. The IKDC and Lysholm scales were applied to all patients for the evolution of subjective results of clinical improvement in a 2-year follow-up; where a significant difference (p = 0.0001) could be observed when comparing both anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction techniques.

Results:

we included 46 patients who underwent anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction for indication of complete injury respectively by the Joint Surgery Service of the Naval Medical Center. A better level of clinical benefit was observed in patients with heterologous graft, both in evaluation by IKDC scale (median 95.52 ± 1.85) as in Lysholm scale (median 94.91 ± 1.62) compared to autologous grafts, IKDC (median 89.92 ± 2.55) and Lysholm (median 86.04 ± 5.58), with value of p = 0.0001 for both cases.

Conclusions:

The results our study suggests that a superiority of functionality is obtained as reported by patients in whom heterograft was used.