Knee Dislocation (Multi-Ligament Reconstruction)

• Multi-ligament knee injuries or knee dislocations are serious conditions that require immediate hospital assessment.
• These injuries often occur as a result of a high impact injury such as a car accident or fall from a height.
• They can also occur from sports or work injuries and involve multiple major ligaments being injured. If all four major ligaments are injured the knee may be dislocated.

What are the symptoms of dislocation?

• Severe pain
• Severe swelling
• Inability to walk
• The knee feeling unstable, loose and wobbly

What does surgery involve?

• The knee needs to be reduced urgently and checked for vascular or neural damage.
• Often the leg is splinted until swelling has reduced sufficiently to allow major surgery.
• There is no real role for non-operative treatment in this scenario and staged surgeries are often performed to reconstruct the ligaments with a combination of autograft (patient’s own tendon), allograft (tendon from a cadaver) and synthetic grafts (artificial ligaments). Recovery is up to a year long.