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Keywords:
Musculoskeletal joint, Musculoskeletal soft tissue, Soft tissues / Skin, MR, Ultrasound, Experimental, Screening, Diagnostic procedure, Experimental investigations, Athletic injuries, Economics, Trauma
Authors:
P. S. Mahajan, P. Chandra, V. C. Negi, A. P. Jayaram, S. A. Hussain; Doha/QA
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2015/C-0348
Aims and objectives
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most commonly injured knee ligament in athletes and can cause significant morbidity in all age groups.
ACL injuries can be particularly devastating to young athletes.
Although numerous procedures have been devised to treat ACL tears,
they have limited cure rates.
Therefore,
it is essential to find techniques or processes to foresee the risk of injury to ACL to adopt appropriate preventive measures.
Approximately three-fourths of mechanical injuries of ACL are noncontact type,
suggesting that early recognition of this risk may help in the prevention of injury [1].
Since physical attributes of every single fibril constituting the ACL and other ligaments of a person are identical [2] and that mean fibril diameter is uniform across sexes [3],
a thinner ACL may just have less number of fibrils,
resulting in inferior strength [4].
A 2009 study reports that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measured smaller ACL volume correlates with ACL injury when weight,
height,
gender,
and age are kept almost constant [4].
However it is debatable,
whether performing an MRI of the knee in an athlete without symptoms is justifiable [5].
Surprisingly there are a very few studies directly or indirectly examining the ACL by ultrasound despite it being an ideal screening examination to assess the size of a normal ACL [6-9].
Hence this study was designed to:
1. Evaluate usefulness of ultrasound in measuring diameter of normal ACL
2. Test if there exists a relationship between smaller ACL diameter and ACL injury,
by measuring the ACL diameter in contralateral knees of ACL injured subjects and comparing them to ACL size in weight,
height,
gender,
and age matched controls.
3. Assess agreement between two radiologists in measuring ACL diameter in cases and matched controls.