Adequacy of semitendinosus tendon alone for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction graft and prediction of hamstring graft size by evaluating simple anthropometric parameters.
BACKGROUND
Preoperative identification of patients with inadequate hamstring grafts for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction is still a subject of interest.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the semitendinosus tendon length is adequate for four-strand graft harvested by common technique (without bone plug) and whether there is correlation of gracilis and semitendinosus tendon grafts length and diameter of quadrupled graft with anthropometric parameters.


METHODS
In this retrospective study, 61 patients (45 males, 16 females) undergoing ACL reconstruction using four-strand hamstring autograft tendons were included. Results. The length of semitendinosus tendon, harvested by the common technique, was in 21% of our cases inadequate in order to be used alone as a four-strand graft especially in females (43%). There was moderate correlation between semitendinosus and gracilis graft diameter and patient's height and weight and fair correlation to BMI. We found no statistically important predictor for graft diameter in female patients.


CONCLUSIONS
The length of semitendinosus tendon, harvested by common technique, is usually inadequate to be used alone as a four-strand graft especially in females. The most reliable predictor seems to be patient's height in males. In female patients, there is no statistically important predictor.
Orthopaedic Department of "Saint Paul" General Hospital of Thessaloniki Greece, Ethnikis Antistaseos 161, 55134 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Stergios G
SG
Papastergiou
Papastergiou G
PG
Stergios
Georgios A
GA
Konstantinidis
Konstantinidis A
KA
Georgios
Konstantinos
K
Natsis
Natsis
N
Konstantinos
Efthymia
E
Papathanasiou
Papathanasiou
P
Efthymia
Nikolaos
N
Koukoulias
Koukoulias
K
Nikolaos
Alexandros G
AG
Papadopoulos
Papadopoulos G
PG
Alexandros