Morphologic changes in the human patellar tendon after bone-tendon-bone anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed on 15 patients, an average of 2.5 years after arthroscopically assisted bone-tendon-bone (BTB) anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, to evaluate the patellar tendon donor site. Five patients who had arthroscopically assisted ACL reconstruction using the semitendinosus tendon as a graft also were scanned bilaterally and evaluated. The mean difference between the involved and uninvolved patellar tendon length was -0.2 mm for the BTB patients and -2.6 mm for the semitendinosus patients. The mean difference between patellar tendon width for the BTB patients was 1.1 mm and 1.9 mm for the semitendinosus patients. The mean difference between patellar tendon thickness was 0.4 mm for the BTB surgery group and 0.02 mm for the semitendinosus surgery group. None of the differences were statistically significant. Results indicate that harvesting the central one third of the patellar tendon does not significantly affect the length, width, or thickness of the tendon at least 22 months after arthroscopically assisted BTB-ACL.