Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: By analyzing the structure and mechanical characteristics of knee joint, this study aims to clarify the mechanism underlying cruciate ligament injury, and to review the types and characteristics of cruciate ligament repair materials, thus providing evidence for the prevention of knee ligament injury and repair after injury.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of CNKI Database (http://www.cnki.net/index.htm) and Pubmed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) from January 2000 to September 2010 was performed by the first author for basic and clinical application about biomaterials in repair of knee cruciate ligament injury, using the keywords of “ligament, damage, reconstruction” in Chinese and in English. Duplicated and old studies were excluded, and the data were preliminarily checked, and citations after each article were also searched.
RESULTS: Accordance with inclusion criteria, 28 article were selected. The sudden knee force and complexity are important reasons for knee injury. Cruciate ligament injury is an important type of knee injury, due to poor healing capacity of cruciate ligament itself, the main treatment is arthroscopic allograft reconstruction. In cruciate ligament reconstruction, repair materials include autologous graft or allograft and artificial materials. Present clinical study on knee cruciate ligament reconstruction is developed in reconstruction materials, reconstruction effects and reconstruction techniques. Experimental studies on knee cruciate ligament focus on the promotion of tendon-bone healing, angiogenesis, collagen remodeling, aims to investigate the role of seed cells and growth factors for tissue engineering ligament.
CONCLUSION: Knee cruciate ligament injury is a common phenomenon in knee injury, in cruciate ligament reconstruction, both autograft, allograft, or artificial ligaments have certain disadvantages, with the development of tissue engineering, future research should investigate a new artificial ligament, which is biological, mechanical compatible with normal ligament, biomechanics similar to normal ligament.