A STUDY OF DIFFERENT BONE BRUISING PATTERNS ON MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING IN PATIENTS WITH ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT INJURY

Abstract

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the primary stabilizing structure of the knee which offers primary resistance to anterior tibial translation and also limits its internal rotation. Sports related injuries are the most common cause of ACL injury and non-contact type mechanism accounts for majority of these cases. Different injury mechanisms that cause ACLinjuries most often also results in osseous injuries of distal femur and proximal tibia and produce different patterns of bone bruise or edema which can be well identied on MRI. The present study aims to nd out the different bone bruise patterns in ACLinjury and also to nd the association between different mechanism of injury and the bone bruise pattern. In this cross sectional, prospective study, 40 patients fullling the inclusion criteria are included over a period of 18 months in a tertiary care hospital. Diagnosis of ACL injury and bone bruise is conrmed on MRI. In our study it was found that the most common bone bruise pattern was over lateral side of both femur and tibia in ACL injury. Among different mechanisms of injury, valgus component at knee and pivoting mechanisms resulted in maximum injuries. There is no statistically signicant association between different mechanism of injury and bone bruise patterns in ACL injury (p-value >0.05). However, in conclusion since a particular mechanism of injury has got more tendency towards a specic bone bruise pattern it is possible that by identifying specic bone bruise pattern on MRI we can have an idea about the mechanism of injury and can also look for other associated injuries along with ACLinjury caused by that particular mechanism.