Association of Tibial Slope Alterations with Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Injury and Mucoid Degeneration

Overview

Journal Skeletal Radiol

Specialties Orthopedics
Radiology

Date 2024 Jul 17

PMID 39017944

Authors

Varun Ravi

Mahad Rehman

Shuda Xia

Avneesh Chhabra

Flavio Duarte Silva

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: To compare radiographic measurements of lateral tibial slope (LTS), medial TS (MTS), and coronal TS (CTS) in MRI-defined intact, injured, and mucoid-degenerated native ACL knees and determine inter-reader reliability.

Materials And Methods: Patient records from 2 years at tertiary care hospitals were reviewed for individuals aged 18-100 undergoing 3-Tesla knee MRI and radiographs. Two randomly selected cohorts, control, and pathologic ACLs on MRI with 86 patients each, were age, gender, and BMI-matched. A fellowship-trained musculoskeletal radiologist reevaluated curated images, characterizing ACL status. Two trained medical students independently collected clinical data and measured slopes on blinded radiographs. ICC, Cohen's kappa, and case-control matching were performed using SPSS statistical package, with ICC and ANOVA used for comparisons.

Results: Among 172 patients with 172 MRIs and radiographs, there were 86 controls and 86 ACL lesions. There were 108/172 (62.79%) males and 64/172 (37.21%) females. ICCs were 0.966 for MTS, 0.975 for LTS, and 0.978 for CTS. Mucoid degeneration patients had a higher BMI and were older than control (p < .05) or completely torn (p < .001) ACL patients. There was no difference in TS between normal and pathologic ACLs; however, LTS-MTS differences were larger with partial tears (2.5 ± 4.9) than normal ACLs by 4.5° (± 1.2, p < .001), complete tears by 4.5° (± 1.3, p < .001), and mucoid degeneration by 4.9° (± 1.5, p = .001).

Conclusion: Various TS measurements are reliable. LTS-MTS differences are associated with different ACL lesions compared to normal ACLs.

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