Significance of the Anterior Tibial Translocation Sign in predicting the presence of Anterior Cruciate Ligament tears in Arthroscopically-proven cases

Abstract

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury remains a common orthopedic case, especially in young adults with an active lifestyle. Activities of daily living and sports performance may be vastly compromised; thus, immediate diagnosis is essential. The researchers tested the diagnostic ability of the anterior tibial translocation sign (using the 5 mm cut-off) against the gold standard knee arthroscopy using cross-sectional study design. Analysis of the 23 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed a sensitivity of 42.9% (true positives: 6 had ≥5 mm reading out of 14 positive arthroscopy findings), specificity of 77.8% (true negatives: 7 had <5 mm reading out of 9 negative arthroscopy findings) and positive predictive value (PPV) of 75.0% (6 out of 8 positive arthroscopy findings among ≥5 mm). In the sample data, 7 mm cut-off had the optimal trade-off between sensitivity and type I error, thus being the most predictive of ACL tear.

  1. Bari AA, Kashikar SV, Lakhkar BN, et al. Evaluation of MRI versus arthroscopy in anterior cruciate ligament and meniscal injuries. Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. December 2014;8(12): RC 14–RC 18.
  2. Snoj Z, Zupanc O, Salapura V, et al. Anterior tibial translation as a potential indicator of the long-term anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction outcome. European Society of Radiology Electronic Presentation Online System (EPOS) 2016, Poster No. C-2038.
  3. Chiu, Sonny Sau-hin (2006). The anterior tibial translocation sign. Radiology Journal. June 2006;239(3):914–15.
  4. Brandser EA, Riley MA, Berbaum KKS, et al. MR Imaging of the anterior cruciate ligament injury: independent value of primary and secondary signs. American Journal of Roentgenology. 1996;167(1):121–6.
  5. Vahey TN, Hunt JE, Shelbourne KD. Anterior translocation of the tibia at MR imaging; a secondary sign of anterior cruciate ligament tear. Journal of Radiology. 1993;187(3):817–19.
  6. Chan WP, Peterfy C, Fritz RC, Genant HK. MR diagnosis of complete tears of the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee: importance of anterior subluxation of the tibia. American Journal of Roentgenology. 1994;162(2):355–60.

Articles related to the one you are viewing

There are currently no results to show, please try again later

CC BY: Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/