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Background: Osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) occurs most commonly in the knees of young individuals. This condition is known to cause pain and discomfort in the knee and can lead to disability and early knee osteoarthritis. The cause is not well understood, and treatment plans are not well delineated. The Research in Osteochondritis Dissecans of the Knee (ROCK) group established a multicenter, prospective cohort to better understand this disease. Purpose: To provide a baseline report of the ROCK multicenter prospective cohort and present a descriptive analysis of baseline data for patient characteristics, lesion characteristics, and clinical findings of the first 1000 cases enrolled into the prospective cohort. Study Design: Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Patients were recruited from centers throughout the United States. Baseline data were obtained for patient characteristics, sports participation, patient-reported measures of functional capabilities and limitations, physical examination, diagnostic imaging results, and initial treatment plan. Descriptive statistics were completed for all outcomes of interest. Results: As of November 2020, a total of 27 orthopaedic surgeons from 17 institutions had enrolled 1004 knees with OCD, representing 903 patients (68.9% males; median age, 13.1 years; range, 6.3-25.4 years), into the prospective cohort. Lesions were located on the medial femoral condyle (66.2%), lateral femoral condyle (18.1%), trochlea (9.5%), patella (6.0%), and tibial plateau (0.2%). Most cases involved multisport athletes (68.1%), with the most common primary sport being basketball for males (27.3% of cases) and soccer for females (27.6% of cases). The median Pediatric International Knee Documentation Committee (Pedi-IKCD) score was 59.9 (IQR, 45.6-73.9), and the median Pediatric Functional Activity Brief Scale (Pedi-FABS) score was 21.0 (IQR, 5.0-28.0). Initial treatments were surgical intervention (55.4%) and activity restriction (44.0%). When surgery was performed, surgeons deemed the lesion to be stable at intraoperative assessment in 48.1% of cases. Conclusion: The multicenter ROCK group has been able to enroll the largest knee OCD cohort to date. This information is being used to further understand the pathology of OCD, including its cause, associated comorbidities, and initial presentation and symptoms. The cohort having been established is now being followed longitudinally to better define and elucidate the best treatment algorithms based on these presenting signs and symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The reliability of assessing healing on plain radiographs has not been well-established for knee osteochondritis dissecans (OCD). Purpose: To determine the inter- and intrarater reliability of specific radiographic criteria in judging healing of femoral condyle OCD. Study Design: Cohort study (Diagnosis); Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Ten orthopedic sports surgeons rated the radiographic healing of 30 knee OCD lesions at 2 time points, a minimum of 1 month apart. First, raters compared pretreatment and 2-year follow-up radiographs on “overall healing” and on 5 subfeatures of healing, including OCD boundary, sclerosis, size, shape, and ossification using a continuous slider scale. “Overall healing” was also rated using a 7-tier ordinal scale. Raters then compared the same 30 pretreatment knee radiographs in a stepwise progression to the 2-, 4-, 7-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up radiographs on “overall healing” using a continuous slider scale. Interrater and intrarater reliability were assessed using intraclass correlations (ICC) derived from a 2-way mixed effects analysis of variance for absolute agreement. Results: Overall healing of the OCD lesions from pretreatment to 2-year follow-up radiographs was rated with excellent interrater reliability (ICC = 0.94) and intrarater reliability (ICC = 0.84) when using a continuous scale. The reliability of the 5 subfeatures of healing was also excellent (interrater ICCs of 0.87-0.89; intrarater ICCs of 0.74-0.84). The 7-tier ordinal scale rating of overall healing had lower interrater (ICC = 0.61) and intrarater (ICC = 0.68) reliability. The overall healing of OCD lesions at the 5 time points up to 24 months had interrater ICCs of 0.81-0.88 and intrarater ICCs of 0.65-0.70. Conclusion: Interrater reliability was excellent when judging the overall healing of OCD femoral condyle lesions on radiographs as well as on 5 specific features of healing on 2-year follow-up radiographs. Continuous scale rating of OCD radiographic healing yielded higher reliability than the ordinal scale rating. Raters showed substantial to excellent agreement of OCD overall radiographic healing measured on a continuous scale at 2, 4, 7, 12, and 24 months after starting treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction failure occurs in up to 10% of cases. Technical errors are considered the most common cause of graft failure despite the absence of validated studies. Limited data are available regarding the agreement among orthopaedic surgeons regarding the causes of primary ACL reconstruction failure and accuracy of graft tunnel Placement.Hypothesis: Experienced knee surgeons have a high level of interobserver reliability in the agreement about the causes of primary ACL reconstruction failure, anatomic graft characteristics, and tunnel placement.Study Design: Cohort study (diagnosis); Level of evidence, 3.Methods: Twenty cases of revision ACL reconstruction were randomly selected from the Multicenter ACL Revision Study (MARS)database. Each case included the patient's history, standardized radiographs, and a concise 30-second arthroscopic video taken at the time of revision demonstrating the graft remnant and location of the tunnel apertures. All 20 cases were reviewed by 10 MARS surgeons not involved with the primary surgery. Each surgeon completed a 2-part questionnaire dealing with each surgeon's training and practice, as well as the placement of the femoral and tibial tunnels, condition of the primary graft, and the surgeon's opinion as to the causes of graft failure. Interrater agreement was determined for each question with the kappa coefficient and the prevalence-adjusted, bias-adjusted kappa (PABAK).Results: The 10 reviewers have been in practice an average of 14 years and have performed at least 25 ACL reconstructions per year, and 9 were fellowship trained in sports medicine. There was wide variability in agreement among knee experts as to the specific causes of ACL graft failure. When participants were specifically asked about technical error as the cause for failure, inter-observer agreement was only slight (PABAK = 0.26). There was fair overall agreement on ideal femoral tunnel placement (PABAK= 0.55) but only slight agreement on whether a femoral tunnel was too anterior (PABAK = 0.24) and fair agreement on whether it was too vertical (PABAK = 0.46). There was poor overall agreement for ideal tibial tunnel placement (PABAK = 0.17).Conclusion: This study suggests that more objective criteria are needed to accurately determine the causes of primary ACL graft failure as well as the ideal femoral and tibial tunnel placement in patients undergoing revision ACL reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]