This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Study: Ruptured ACL common in patients with symptomatic OA

The incidence of posterior cruciate ligament tears was low among study and control patients.

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis are more likely to have had a partial or complete ACL rupture than patients without knee OA, according to a new study.

The researchers, in the United States and Australia, also found that many patients did not recall suffering a previous knee injury, suggesting ACL tears may be an under-recognized risk factor for OA.

Catherine L. Hill, FRACP, a rheumatologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Australia, and colleagues in Massachusetts and New York, evaluated the prevalence of ACL and PCL tears among 360 patients with a mean age of 67.1 years who had advanced OA. The researchers compared them to a control group of 73 patients with a mean age of 66.1 years.

They used MRIs to identify partial and complete ACL or PCL tears, while patients subjectively quantified knee pain severity and whether they could recall suffering a significant knee injury.

The authors found that 48 control patients had radiographically confirmed knee OA but no pain, and the remaining 25 control patients had no evidence of knee OA or knee discomfort, according to a press release.

Rates of PCL rupture were low in both groups, with only a 0.6% incidence in the study group and no cases in the control group. But significantly more study patients did have a complete ACL rupture - 22.8% compared to 2.7% of control patients (P = .0004), according to the study.

Radiographic analyses showed significantly more patients with ACL rupture also had severe OA, indicated by narrowing of the joint space, compared to patients with intact ACLs (P < .0001). Patients with ACL ruptures did not have higher pain scores, however. Significantly more patients with complete ACL rupture also recalled previous knee injury. Among patients in the study group, 47.9% with complete ACL tears and 25.9% with partial ACL tears reported such injuries (P = .003).

The cross-sectional nature of the study prevented the authors from determining when the ACL ruptures occurred, Hill noted in the press release. "The interval between ACL injury and significant knee symptoms may be as long as 30 years, providing one explanation for the low recall of significant knee injury in our study," she said.

For more information:

• Hill CL, Seo GS, Gale D, et. al. Cruciate ligament integrity in osteoarthritis of the knee. Arthritis Rheum. 2005;52:794-799.