Partial rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament treated with tibial tuberosity advancement without debridement of the remaining ligament: a clinical study of 18 cases

Etiopathogenesis of Canine Cruciate Ligament Disease: A Scoping Review

The spontaneous rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament in dogs remains a pathoetiologic puzzle. Despite much progress in research over the past years, the systemic and local mechanisms leading to ligament degeneration and structural failure remain largely obscure. This scoping review focuses on pathogenesis and aims at summarizing and interpreting today's knowledge on causes of canine cruciate ligament rupture, i.e., the multifactorial mechanisms leading to degenerative stifle joint disease with collagen matrix degeneration and structural failures. Thus, the initial view of traumatic ligament rupture, fostered by "wear and tear", has clearly been replaced by a new concept of systemic processes linked to progressive degenerative joint disease and ligament failure; thus, the term "cranial cruciate ligament disease" has been coined and is generally accepted. In addition, cruciate ligament rupture in people shares some similarities with the lesion in dogs; therefore, the review also includes comparative studies. The methods used were based on the PRISMA-ScR model (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews).

Comparison of tension band wiring and other tibial tuberosity advancement techniques for cranial cruciate ligament repair: an experimental study

BACKGROUND

Cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) rupture is one of the most common causes of limb lameness in dogs. Surgical techniques based on tibial osteotomies such as tibial plateau leveling osteotomy and tibial tuberosity advancement are used to eliminate dynamic thrust. Tibial tuberosity advancement (TTA) uses an osteotomy fixated by cage, plates, forks and screws to change the relationship of the patellar tendon and tibial plateau angle. Tension band wiring technique is one of the most common surgical methods used to treat a tension fracture and remains the gold standard for the treatment of tibial tuberosity fractures. In this study, we compared experimentally the biomechanical effect of application of tension band wiring compared to other techniques for the fixation of the TTA osteotomy. The techniques compared to are standard commercially available systems for TTA fixation.

RESULTS

Tension band wiring (TBW) presented the higher resistance to failure compared to all the other surgical procedures, with the highest values found in the TBW group with 1.47 ± 0.07 N and the lowest in the TTA cage (0.82 ± 0.08) and TTA-2 (0.85 ± 0.06) groups with statistically significant differences in all cases (P < 0.001). TTA rapid and TTA plate groups exhibited a similar strength, and same happened between TTA-2 and TTA cage groups. All the other comparisons by pair were significantly different with P < 0.001.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest that fixating the osteotomy with tension band wiring increases the strength of the fixation and decrease the risk of implant failure. Further clinical studies are needed to demonstrate in vivo reliability and to test different variables such as size and weight of dogs. These results could have important clinical implications in the treatment of CCL ruptures.