The efficacy and safety of intravenous tranexamic acid in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: A randomized controlled trial protocol

BACKGROUND: The safety and efficacy of intravenous tranexamic acid (TXA) in the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction remains controversial. There is an urgent need of studies that efficiently control for confounding, conduct comprehensive and consecutive observation of potential risks of the TXA administration, and investigate its clinical applicability. The purpose of this work is to assess the safety and efficacy of the intravenous TXA in decreasing perioperative blood loss in the patients undergoing ACL reconstruction. METHODS: This randomized, controlled, prospective research was carried out between January 2017 and January 2018. All the patients and their family members signed the informed consent forms, and this current work was authorized via the ethics committee of Nanjing first hospital (registration No.: NJU1003586). A total of 100 patients were divided randomly into 2 group: the control group (n = 50) and study group (n = 50). The study group receives intravenous TXA administration [1 g] before skin incision. The control group receives equivalent normal saline. Primary outcome measures including blood loss, hemoglobin decline, transfusion rate, C-reactive protein, D-dimer value, fibrinogen, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, thrombin time, international normalized ratio and erythrocyte sedimentation rate were recorded. The measures of secondary outcomes refer to the clinical data involving the range of motion and postoperative pain score. The pain score was quantified by utilizing the 10-cm scale of visual analog. The pain strength was in the range of 0–10, where 0 is totally no pain and 10 represents the most severe pain. RESULTS: This experiment had strict inclusive criteria and exclusive criteria and a well- regulated intervention. CONCLUSION: Our results can bring a new perspective on the use of TXA after arthroscopically assisted ACL surgery. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study protocol was registered in Research Registry (researchregistry5798).