Knee Ligament Injury in Femoral Shaft Fractures

Simultaneous knee ligament injury with femoral shaft fracture happens not infrequently. Such injuries may be missed on initial evaluation of the broken limb. In this study we report the prevalence of knee ligament injury in a group of isolated femoral fractures.

A total of 125 patients with isolated femoral fractures entered to this study and followed for 24 months. After fixation of their fractures, all patients underwent a thorough examination of knee ligaments in the operating room.

Among these 123 cases 75.1% were male. Mean age was 26.2 years. There were 39 patients (31.2%) with simultaneous ligamentous injury. The types of ligamentous injury were as follow: medial collateral ligament (18), posterior cruciate ligament (12), lateral collateral ligament (6), and anterior cruciate ligament (3).

Based on the above findings, it is recommended to have a high index of suspicion for co-existence of knee injuries in ipsilateral fracture of femoral shaft.