Toward the Improvement of the Mechanical and Tribological Properties of Braided Ligament for ACL Reconstruction: A “Carrot and Stick” Strategy

Bone tunnel enlargement has been troubling the clinical adoption of braided artificial ligaments for decades, to which mechanical and tribological performance promotion shall be an effective and promising approach. Herein, a "carrot and stick" strategy has been introduced with two types of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers to fabricate hybrid textures, which is expected to advance fatigue and tribological performance without yielding essential mechanical strength and biocompatibility. Owing to advancements in such a "carrot and stick" strategy, the obtained grafts present three promising properties: i) enhancement of mechanical strength; ii) coefficient of friction (COF) reduction of 25% at the greatest extent, thus lowering the risk of bone tunnel enlargement; iii) final displacement shrinkage of graft length after cyclic loadings, favored in the clinic for isometric reconstruction. The results obtained in this study show that the "carrot and stick" strategy can be a creative and convenient method to optimize the service life, saving the complication rate of artificial ligaments for clinical applications.