Study of Coincidence of Hoffa’s Fat Pad Associated Injuries in Knee Traumas in Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Hoffa’s fat pad injuries are often caused by acute direct and indirect trauma and chronic recurrent micro-trauma, and its disorders are associated with other traumas and injuries that have been less paid attention to in radiological studies. Therefore, this study was performed to evaluate the injuries associated with Hoffa’s fat pad injury in knee trauma using the diagnostic Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) method.

The samples of this cross-sectional study (n=98) were selected using the available sampling method from patients with knee trauma referring to the imaging ward of Besat Hospital in Hamadan, Iran, for knee MRI from mid-April 2020 to mid-May 2021. The participants were examined in terms of the types of injuries associated with Hoffa’s fat pad damage. Data were analyzed using SPSS software (version 23).

The mean age of the patients was obtained at 33.13±10.11 years, and 85.7% of the cases were male. Based on the results, Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) rupture (77.6%), bone marrow edema (71.4%), effusion (61.2%), periarticular edema (55.1%), and meniscus rupture (38.8%) were the most injuries associated with Hoffa’s fat pad injury. There was no significant difference between the genders of patients and Hoffa's fat pad injury, including periarticular edema, ACL rupture, posterior cruciate ligament rupture, and collateral ligament rupture following knee trauma. However, the frequency of meniscus rupture was significantly higher in women than in men (P=0.007). Moreover, patients with ACL rupture had a significantly higher mean age than patients without ACL rupture (P=0.047).

A significant number of patients with trauma and Hoffa’s fat pad injuries suffer from associated injuries that can be detected on an MRI of the knee.