The Incidence and Common Locations of Bone Bruise in Patients with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Rupture

Knee is the biggest synovial joint of the human’s body and highly vulnerable that is supported from both sides by collateral ligaments such as anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). ACL injuries may be associated with bone bruise. Previous studies have shown that the location of bone bruise has important clinical concepts, and can reflect the mechanism of injury. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the incidence and common locations of bone bruise in the patients with ACL rupture.

In this cross-sectional study, patients with ACL tears were entered according to the inclusion criteria using census-sampling method. Then, the required information including age, gender, marital status, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) report about the existence of bone bruise and its location were noted. Bone bruise was defined as signal increased in T2 MRI images.

In total, 291 patient including 192 men (66%) and 99 women (34%) with mean age of 38.85 ± 134.84 years were studied. Of these, 120 cases (41.2%) had bone bruise, and the lateral tibial platue and the lateral femoral condyle were founded to have higher incidence of it. Nevertheless, the incidences of bone bruise and its locations were not significantly different between the age, gender, and marital status groups.

Bone bruise is common among the injuries of knee that lead to ACL damage. According to the most prevalent location of bone bruises on the MRI, the most common mechanism of ACL tear in men aged between 20 and 40 years was pivot-shift injury.