Orthopedics and orthopedic surgery are important subdisciplines of medicine.
They comprise the diagnosis, therapy, prevention and rehabilitation of diseases and injuries of the supporting and locomotor apparatus. Orthopedics are the medical discipline dealing with bones, muscles, tendons and joints and their degenerations and diseases.
The supporting and locomotor organs are the biggest organ system of the human body and can therefore be affected by many different diseases.

Over the past decades the number of injuries of the capsule ligament apparatus of the knee joint has steadily increased. This is in part due to the intensive leisure time activities of large sections of the population. Ball sports and skiing are amongst such knee-joint-stressing activities. Acute injuries of the knee joint can be reliably diagnosed thanks to clinical diagnostics such as arthroscopy and magnetic resonnance tomography (MRI).
The anterior cruciate ligament is amongst the most frequently injured ligaments of the knee joint. Only in a few cases an isolated injury of the anterior cruciate ligament is found. Rather, in 3 out of 4 acute ACL ruptures, concomitant injuries are diagnosed, out of which 75% are meniscal lesions.

A simple technical solution for direct fixation of the transplant in the femur and tibia using interference screws generates a stable fixation close to the insertion. The method is established all over the world. The interference screws compress the bone plug or ligament in the tibial or femural drill tunnel, thereby promoting fast bone growth. This allows fast functional aftercare, which again reduces swelling and pain.

Fixing the transplant with metal screws is a widely used method. Implanted metal screws, however, may have a negative after effect, such as hypersensitivity to metals, stress concentrations on the bone, metal artefacts under radiological follow-up examinations. This pushed the development of bioresorbable interference screws. The Richard Wolf Bioact IF Osteotrans bioresorbable interference screws guarantee the same initial ancoring as metal screws. Over time, however, they dissolve slowly and are replaced by the patient's own bone tissue.