Morphometric analysis of the angle of the femoral trochlea

ABSTRACT

The possible association between disorders of the femoropatellar joint and geometrical anatomical variations in the patellar facet and femoral sulcus motivated us to conduct a morphometric study on the angle of the femoral sulcus and to correlate this with possible variation factors, such as length, width at the midpoint of the femur, femur inclination angle, distance between condyles and depth of the patellar facet. The material consisted of 56 dry femurs of both sexes and various ages 24 from the right side and 32 from the left side. The patellar facets were photographed at three positions a) start level; b) middle level; and c) end level. The angle formed in each of these positions was measured using graphical tools in CorelDraw X4. To analyze the results, the statistical tests used were chi-square and Student’s t-test for correlations. The results obtained were a) angle of the patellar facet mean for start level of the patellar facet = 129°01; mean for middle level = 131°35 and mean for end level = 132°14; b) mean distance between condyles = 50.29  mm; c) mean depth of the patellar facet = 9.55 mm; d) mean for Ficat and Bizou’s condylar depth index = 5.45. We concluded that the angle of the femoral sulcus increased from the start of the patellar facet to its end, and that its variability was weakly influenced by the length, width, femur inclination angle and side, according to the t-test (significance of 5%) for the correlation coefficients found.