ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the correlation between osteophytes size and lower limb alignment in the knees of patients with Kaschin-Beck disease (KBD).Methods A total of 300 clinically diagnosed patients with KBD were X-rayed on knee-joints which ranged from the distal half of femur to proximal half of tibia.Meanwhile some related parameters in the X film with the anteroposterior position (including osteophytes length,femorotibial angle,femorotibial joint space ratio of inner side to outer side) were measured by DICOM 2.0,a software of medical graphic measuring,then followed by calculating the osteophyte spur index.The association between femorotibial angle,femorotibial joint space ratio and osteophytes spur index was evaluated by Pearson correlation test.Results The average of femorotibial angle of all the tested knee-joints was (165.97 ± 4.02)°,which positively correlated with both the osteophyte spur index of the medial femoral condyle [(6.54 ± 3.12)％,correlation coefficient (r) =0.524,P＜0.01] and the osteophyte spur index of medial tibil plateau [(7.14 ± 3.40)％,r =0.578,P ＜0.01].The femorotibial joint space ratio was 0.61 ± 0.13,which positively correlated with both the osteophyte spur index of medial femoral condyle (r =0.531,P ＜0.01) and that of the medial tibil plateau (r =0.563,P ＜0.01).Conclusions The results of this study indicate that there is a positive correlation between lower limb alignment and osteophyte size of both the medial femoral condyle and the medial tibial plateau.This finding may be evidenced by the fact that the changes of lower limb biomechanics may contribute to formation and development of osteophytes in the kneejoint.