Varying femoral-sided fixation techniques in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction have similar clinical outcomes: a network meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ImportanceThere is significant controversy regarding the optimal femoral fixation method in anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Given the importance of ACL reconstruction in patient return to sport and quality of life, it is imperative to identify the optimal method of femoral fixation.ObjectiveThe primary objective of this study is to identify the optimal method of femoral fixation in ACL reconstruction with soft tissue grafts. There are three main techniques for femoral-sided fixation in ACL reconstruction: suspensory extracortical buttons (EC), interference screws (IS) and transfemoral crosspins (TF). Previous primary studies have provided conflicting results regarding the superior method, and prior systematic reviews have failed to identify a difference; however, these analyses were only able to make comparisons between two of the treatments directly. This study employed a network meta-analysis technique to maximise sample size and statistical power, increasing the validity of its findings.Evidence reviewA network meta-analysis was conducted using results from 19 randomised controlled trials. Only studies with level I or II evidence, directly comparing two interventions in ACL soft tissue graft reconstruction, were included. Graft failure rates, International Knee Documentation Committee scores and KT-1000 knee arthrometer scores were the primary outcomes measured. Secondary outcomes included Lysholm, Tegner, Lachman and Pivot Shift scores.FindingsAn overall sample of 1372 patients was analysed. No statistically significant differences were detected among outcomes, except for the KT-1000 analysis which slightly favoured EC over IS and TF fixation (mean difference (MD)=−0.53 mm; 95% CI −0.07 to –0.98), and TF over IS fixation (MD=−0.41 mm; 95% CI −0.05 to –0.76). The clinical consequences of this difference are likely minimal.ConclusionsBased on the results of this network meta-analysis, there is no clear statistically superior method of femoral fixation in soft tissue ACL reconstruction.Level of evidenceLevel II (systematic review of level I and II studies). There is significant controversy regarding the optimal femoral fixation method in anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Given the importance of ACL reconstruction in patient return to sport and quality of life, it is imperative to identify the optimal method of femoral fixation. The primary objective of this study is to identify the optimal method of femoral fixation in ACL reconstruction with soft tissue grafts. There are three main techniques for femoral-sided fixation in ACL reconstruction: suspensory extracortical buttons (EC), interference screws (IS) and transfemoral crosspins (TF). Previous primary studies have provided conflicting results regarding the superior method, and prior systematic reviews have failed to identify a difference; however, these analyses were only able to make comparisons between two of the treatments directly. This study employed a network meta-analysis technique to maximise sample size and statistical power, increasing the validity of its findings. A network meta-analysis was conducted using results from 19 randomised controlled trials. Only studies with level I or II evidence, directly comparing two interventions in ACL soft tissue graft reconstruction, were included. Graft failure rates, International Knee Documentation Committee scores and KT-1000 knee arthrometer scores were the primary outcomes measured. Secondary outcomes included Lysholm, Tegner, Lachman and Pivot Shift scores. An overall sample of 1372 patients was analysed. No statistically significant differences were detected among outcomes, except for the KT-1000 analysis which slightly favoured EC over IS and TF fixation (mean difference (MD)=−0.53 mm; 95% CI −0.07 to –0.98), and TF over IS fixation (MD=−0.41 mm; 95% CI −0.05 to –0.76). The clinical consequences of this difference are likely minimal. Based on the results of this network meta-analysis, there is no clear statistically superior method of femoral fixation in soft tissue ACL reconstruction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".