Two hundred consecutively seen patients who had an injury to either the
anterior cruciate ligament or the medial collateral ligament, or both, were
randomly allocated to treatment by either conservative or a surgical
regimen. Injuries to the medial collateral ligament could not be
demonstrated to benefit from surgical treatment in any respect--with or
without surgery the results were excellent. With injuries to the anterior
cruciate ligament, recovery was more rapid without surgery but otherwise
the results differed between the groups in only one respect: the
pivot-shift test was more often positive after conservative treatment. The
results were good in both treatment groups even though most of the patients
who had an injury of the anterior cruciate ligament were somewhat less
pleased with the outcome after a period of time.