Background: Floating Knee injuries are complex injuries. The type of fractures, soft tissue and associated injuries make this a challenging problem to manage. We present the outcome of these injuries after surgical management.

Background: Floating knee injuries are usually associated with other significant injuries. Do these injuries have implications on the management of the floating knee and the final outcome of patients? Our study aims to assess the implications of associated injuries in the management and final outcome of floating knee.

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b Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UKIntroduction: To date, no study has characterised the progressive return to function from contralateral ACL reconstruction in the short-term postoperative period. We investigated differences in short-term outcomes following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction with contralateral and ipsilateral autogenous patellar tendon grafts. Methods: Between 2006 and 2007, 108 consecutive patients underwent ACL reconstruction using either the contralateral (n = 17) or ipsilateral (n = 91) patellar tendon. Inclusion criteria were applied and eight patients from each treatment group were matched for age, gender and activity level. Outcome measures for quadriceps muscle strength, range of motion (ROM), objective stability and International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) subjective knee scores were evaluated. Results: At 3 and 6 months after surgery, patients in the contralateral treatment group had greater mean quadriceps strength in both donor and reconstructed knees than in the reconstructed knee of the ipsilateral group. At 3 months after surgery 42.9% (3/7) in the contralateral treatment group achieved 85% of baseline (preoperative) quadriceps strength bilaterally versus 14.3% (1/7) in the ipsilateral group. The mean IKDC subjective knee score for the contralateral group was 70.6 at 3 months and 82.0 at 6 months versus 56.7 and 79.7, respectively for ipsilateral ACL reconstruction. Mean flexion at 3 months was 126.0 • in the contralateral group and 115.0 • in the ipsilateral group. Mean KT-1000 side-to-side differences in stability were similar in both treatment groups. Discussion and conclusion: Contralateral ACL reconstruction appears to offer benefits in quadriceps strength recovery, ROM and IKDC subjective knee scores in the short-term follow-up period. It would appear that patients have a quicker return to function from contralateral patellar tendon graft with an easier early rehabilitation period.