Magnetic Resonance Imaging in diagnosing anterior and posterior cruciate ligament injury of knee joint with arthroscopic correlation

Abstract

Anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments are the most injured of the major knee ligaments. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) knee is routinely used to diagnose or support clinical diagnosis for cruciate ligament tear before arthroscopic treatment. MRI of the knee has been regarded as the non-invasive alternative to diagnostic arthroscopy, which is regarded as the gold standard for the diagnosis of traumatic intra-articular knee injuries. A cross-sectional study was carried out in the Department of Radiology in collaboration with Orthopedics among 55 patients with clinically suspected anterior and posterior cruciate ligament injury using the purposive sampling method. MRI diagnosis of anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments tear correlated significantly well with arthroscopic diagnosis as shown by the higher validity test results with 90.91% sensitivity, 97.73% specificity, 96.36% accuracy, 90.91% positive predictive value, and 97.73% negative predictive value. The study also revealed that there is no statistically significant difference (p =0.62) between MRI and arthroscopy in the evaluation of cruciate ligament tears. Therefore, MRI is a reliable tool and non-invasive diagnostic modality in the evaluation of anterior and posterior cruciate ligament tears before surgical management of these cases.