IMAGING-FREE NAVIGATION OF THE ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT: 50 OPERATED KNEES

Purpose: Anterior cruciate ligament plasty requires an anatomic and isometric implantation avoiding all notch conflict. This requires appropriate position of the bone holes. Recent studies have shown that hole placement is a key problem. In order to attempt to solve this problem, we examined the possibility of imaging-free navigation.Material and methods: We elaborated a navigation system based on the bone morphing a concept where a static model of the knee is displayed on the screen. The system uses a 3D optic localiser which records the relative positions of five rigid bodies equipped with reflectors fixed on the femur, the tibia, the palper, the femoral aiming devise and the tibial aiming device. The arthroscopic operative technique is based on bone morphing. The operator navigates from the tibial articular hole drawn as a circle around the point T for which the computer maps on the notch the corresponding femoral isometry. On this isometry map, the surgeon navigates to the femoral articular hole drawn...