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A new ligament in human brain has been discovered by two knee surgeons at University Hospitals Leuven. The discovered ligament might be related to patients with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears.

There are few cases in which even after a successful ACL repair surgery and rehabilitation some patients continue to face a problem termed as “pivot shift”. These are episodes where the knee gives way during an activity.

Orthopaedic surgeons Dr Steven Claes and Professor Dr Johan Bellemans have been working for the last four years to find the exact reason for the same. They started with an 1879 article by a French surgeon that postulated the existence of one more ligament which is located nearer the front of the human knee.

Eventually the postulation turned out to be correct and the surgeons are the first to discover the ligament. They found that the ligament discovered by them named anterolateral ligament (ALL) is present in 97 per cent of all human knees.

In the research it was also found that pivot shift which is a giving way of patients with an ACL tear is caused by an injury in the same ligament.

Findings of the research are published in the Journal of Anatomy. Surgeons also received praises from the Anatomical Society. The society awarded the research as “very refreshing”. They also told that the research was a reminder of medical world that despite enormous advancement in technology, our knowledge of the very basic anatomy of human body is not exhaustive yet.

The research also questions the current medical reasoning about serious ACL injuries. Both surgeons are working on a surgical technique to correct ALL injuries and they expect some results in the coming years.