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Prevalence of the fabella and its general characteristics in Turkish population with magnetic resonance imaging

  • Anatomic Bases of Medical, Radiological and Surgical Techniques
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Abstract

Introduction

The fabella is a fibrocartilaginous or ossified sesamoid bone in the knee, largely located in the lateral tendon of the head of the gastrocnemius muscle. In this study, the prevalence, gender differences, localization and size of the fabella were determined in a Turkish population to make a comparison with other population studies in the literature.

Materials and methods

Thousand patients (500 females, 500 males) who underwent knee magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with fabella in all three planes, including axial, sagittal and coronal evaluated, retrospectively. All MRI examinations were performed using a 1.5 T unit. Patients with a history of trauma or operation, motion artifacts and patients who could not be evaluated due to image quality were excluded. Anteroposterior diameter in sagittal plan (sAP) of the fabella and the fabella-femur distance was measured. Measurements were evaluated with Pearson’s Chi-squared and Mann–Whitney U test for non-homogeneous data in SPSS program, and ANOVA test for homogeneous data. A p value of < 0.05 was considered significant in all analyses.

Results

The overall prevalence of fabella was found to be 155 cases. Unilateral fabella was detected in 72.9% of the cases, of which 56.6% were on the right side and 43.4% were on the left side. The median value of AP diameter in sagittal plan was calculated as 4.40 ± 1.31 mm. Concerning the gender-related examination the sAP diameter of the fabella was larger in men than in women (p < 0.05). The median value of FFD was calculated as 2.50 ± 0.50 mm. The distribution of FFD between genders was not statistically significant (p = 0.492).

Conclusion

The fabella is usually a sesamoid bone that can be detected incidentally by imaging techniques. The incidence in the Turkish population is 15.5%, and no gender difference was detected. It is clear that further studies on the basis of populations are needed, especially considering that pathological problems remain in question and there is a lack of scientific data (variations, developmental characteristics, etc.) on sesamoid bones.

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Funding

This study did not receive any funding or financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Justice, Council of Forensic Medicine, İstanbul, Turkey

    Ozge Unluturk

  2. Department of Radiology, University of Health Sciences, Ankara Bilkent City Hospital, Bilkent Bulvarı No.1, Ankara, Turkey

    Semra Duran

  3. Department of Forensic Medicine, Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey

    Hacer Yasar Teke

Authors
  1. Ozge Unluturk
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  2. Semra Duran
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  3. Hacer Yasar Teke
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Contributions

OU and HYT: Data collection or management, analysis, and manuscript writing/editing. SD: Data collection or management.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Semra Duran.

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Ethics committee approval could not be obtained due to the retrospective nature of our study.

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Unluturk, O., Duran, S. & Yasar Teke, H. Prevalence of the fabella and its general characteristics in Turkish population with magnetic resonance imaging. Surg Radiol Anat 43, 2047–2054 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-021-02817-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-021-02817-3

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