Brains
A couple of Belgium surgeons have discovered a new ligament in the human knee: the antereolateral ligament or ALL. It’s hard to believe that a new ligament could have been discovered, but it appears that it’s true.
NPR wrote up a great article about this new ligament. Here is an excerpt of that NPR article:
by MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF
There is an overlooked ligament in the knee. And it might be important for keeping your knee from twisting and turning, especially after an injury to the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL.
Dr. Johan Bellemans and his team at the University Hospital Leuven described the ligament a few months ago in the Journal of Anatomy. They named it the anterolateral ligament, or ALL, and they offered the first clear data on what it’s function is.
“It’s eye-opening and provocative work,” says Scott Rodeo, the chief of orthopedic surgery at the Hospital For Special Surgery in New York City. He wasn’t involved in the study, but he saw Bellemans’ team present the work at a conference.
“We’ve known for years that there was a hardened, fibrous tissue in this location,” he tells Shots. “And that this area of tissue plays some role. So it’s not such a dramatic discovery but kind of a rediscovery — or a refocusing of attention.”
The ALL is about the length of a small thumb. The band connects the thigh bone to the shinbone on the outside of the leg. The ligament probably helps to keep the knee from rotating inward, the researchers suggest.
Damage to the ALL may be one reason why some people don’t bounce back after ACL surgery. About 9 in 10 people who have their ACL repaired can return to sports with no problems at all, Rodeo says. But for some, the knee still isn’t quite right. It buckles abnormally or gives way during sports.
“The ALL may have a role in small percentage of patients with persistent problems after the reconstruction of their ACL,” Rodeo says. “We need to learn more about its function and pay more attention to it.”
Even after ACL surgery is successful, Rodeo says, about half of people develop arthritis in the knee 15 years later.
“The next frontier in knee surgery is preventing arthritis,” he says. “Should we start to focus on this ligamet? Maybe.”
Update at 4:46 p.m. ET:
Bellemans, the lead surgeon on the study, tells Shots that about 80 percent of his patients with ACL tears also have an injury in the ALL.
Over the past few years, he and his team have been repairing the ligament when they fix an ACL. But it’s too soon to say whether the extra treatment raises the success rate of the surgery.
So why have doctors overlooked the the ligament for decades?
“It’s not so easy to find,” Bellemans says. “If you ask even the most experienced surgeon to look for the ALL, they wouldn’t find it. It’s in an area that we don’t usually see during surgery.”
Read the full NPR article here:
i consider, that you have misled. Physical therapy for knee
rheumatism You were not mistaken, all is true
This discovery is akin to finding a hundred dollar bill tucked behind my ear!
Almost doesn’t seem possible the the quantity of knee surgeries there have been in the past 60 years.