MRI study of the cruciate ligaments and menisco-femoral ligaments of the knee

Purpose It has been argued that the meniscus-femoral ligaments disappear with age. We therefore analyzed the presence of the meniscus-femoral ligaments, in MRI. Materials and Methods We measured the PCL, ACL and MFL, noting their presence or absence in 120 Knee MRIs, 51 in women and 69 in men. All knees underwent MRI in the coronal, sagittal and axial planes. T1 and T2 weighted sequences were obtained. A descriptive statistical study of all the variables was carried out, and a comparative study was performed between sexes, sides and age groups. Results The MFLp was more frequent, found in 67 (55.8%) cases, than the MFLa, in 36 (30%) cases, and both together were present in 27 (22.5%) knees. We found a strong correlation between ACL length and PCL length ( p = 0.001), we found no correlation between the presence of the posterior MFL either with age ( p = 0.307) or with sex ( p = 0.779) or side ( p = 0.733). We also found no relationship between the presence of the anterior MFL and age ( p = 0.553), or sex ( p = 0.913), or laterality ( p = 0.082). Conclusion We found a strong correlation between ACL length and PCL length. In our study, the presence of the posterior MFL was more frequent, being present in 55.68%, while the anterior MFL was found in 30% of the knees. We did not observe that the presence of LMF decreases with age.