A prospective single-center review of 303 traumatic knee dislocations at a Norwegian level 1 trauma center over nearly 20 years. It characterizes ligament injury patterns using the Schenck classification and the neurovascular, meniscal, and cartilage injuries that travel with them. The goal is to help surgeons avoid missing associated injuries and plan reconstruction.
Treat every knee dislocation as a neurovascular emergency until proven otherwise, and let the ligament pattern sharpen your suspicion. When the lateral side is torn (KD III-L), the common peroneal nerve and popliteal artery sit right in harm's way. That is why this pattern carries 42-fold odds of peroneal nerve injury and 9-fold odds of popliteal artery injury.
A nerve deficit and a vascular injury travel together (OR 20.6). So a foot drop should make you look harder at the vessels, and an ABI below 0.8 to 0.9 warrants arteriography even if pulses feel present.
Get these knees diagnosed and treated early. Chronic dislocations had cartilage damage in nearly half of patients versus one in five treated acutely, because a knee left unstable keeps shearing its own joint surface. For boards, know the full Schenck classification cold and that KD III-M, not KD III-L, was the most common pattern in this large series.
A prospective single-center review of 303 traumatic knee dislocations at a Norwegian level 1 trauma center over nearly 20 years. It characterizes ligament injury patterns using the Schenck classification and the neurovascular, meniscal, and cartilage injuries that travel with them. The goal is to help surgeons avoid missing associated injuries and plan reconstruction.
Treat every knee dislocation as a neurovascular emergency until proven otherwise, and let the ligament pattern sharpen your suspicion. When the lateral side is torn (KD III-L), the common peroneal nerve and popliteal artery sit right in harm's way. That is why this pattern carries 42-fold odds of peroneal nerve injury and 9-fold odds of popliteal artery injury.
A nerve deficit and a vascular injury travel together (OR 20.6). So a foot drop should make you look harder at the vessels, and an ABI below 0.8 to 0.9 warrants arteriography even if pulses feel present.
Get these knees diagnosed and treated early. Chronic dislocations had cartilage damage in nearly half of patients versus one in five treated acutely, because a knee left unstable keeps shearing its own joint surface. For boards, know the full Schenck classification cold and that KD III-M, not KD III-L, was the most common pattern in this large series.