The Morphometric Study Of Anterior Cruciate Ligament: A Cadaveric Study

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The anterior cruciate ligament is frequently injured ligament of the knee. It divides into anteromedialand posterolateral budles attached into tibia and femur. This study aimed to measure the length and width of twobundles of ACL separately to observe the morphormetrical difference. Since single or double bundle ACLreconstructive surgical procedure are commonly used by orthopaedic surgeon, our study may help them inhamstring or tendon graft procedures.Material and Methods: The Cadaveric study was conducted in the department of Anatomy at Pondicherry instituteof Medical sciences, Pondicherry from December 2015 – May 2016. Randomly selected thirty cadaveric wasincluded for the study and knees with ACL tear; macroscopic degenerative changes or any evidence of trauma wasexcluded from the study. The data was presented as frequencies and proportions, mean and standard deviations.Statistical significance (p value) was considered at 0.05 levels.Results: There was a statistically significant increase in transverse diameter. We observed P value of transversediameter of anteromedial bundle at tibial attchment (0.01) and (0.05) in anteroposterior diameter of posterolateralat tibial and in middle (0.04) showed a statistically significant increase in transverse diameter.Conclusion: ACL tears are managed surgically by a double bundle or single bundle ACL reconstruction technique.Recently, the anatomic double bundle ACL reconstruction has been found to be better in restoring the intact kneefunction compared to the conventional single bundle surgery when done perfectly. So our study of morphometricmeasurements of ACL can help the surgeons during accurate tendon graft procedure of anterior cruciate ligamentreconstructive surgeries.