Factors affecting the region of most isometric femoral attachments
- 1 March 1989
- journal article
- review article
- Published by SAGE Publications in The American Journal of Sports Medicine
- Vol. 17 (2), 197-207
- https://doi.org/10.1177/036354658901700209
Abstract
We measured how the distance between selected tibial and femoral attachments of the PCL changes with knee flexion in six intact cadaver knees. The femoral location was the primary determinant of whether the distance increased, decreased, or remained nearly constant. The proximal-distal location of a fiber's femoral attachment had a stronger effect than had the anterior-posterior location. The tibial location had only a small statistically significant effect. These results suggest that the func tion of fibers within the PCL is determined primarily by their femoral attachment location. We determined all femoral attachments whose tibio femoral distance changed 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 mm during flexion from 0° to 90°. No absolutely isometric point existed. Attachments whose separation distance changed less than 2 mm formed a bullet-shaped region whose base was against the roof of the intercondylar notch and whose nose pointed posteriorly and slightly distally. The axis of the "bullet" was near the proximal edge of the femoral insertion of the PCL. Along the axis, anterior attachments, located near the roof of the intercondylar notch, were more isometric than were posterior attachments, located near the cartilage. At tachments located distal to the axis moved away from the tibial insertion of the PCL when the knee was flexed. The more distal the femoral attachment, the larger the increase in tibiofemoral distance that occurred with flexion. The opposite was true of attachments proximal to the 2 mm region.Keywords
This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
- Sensitivity of Insertion Locations on Length Patterns of Anterior Cruciate Ligament FibersJournal of Biomechanical Engineering, 1986
- Anatomy of the Anterior Cruciate LigamentPublished by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) ,1983
- Knee Joint Structure and FunctionClinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 1980
- Roentgen stereophotogrammetric methods for the evaluation of the three dimensional kinematic behaviour and cruciate ligament length patterns of the human knee jointJournal of Biomechanics, 1979
- Anterior cruciate ligament: functional anatomy of its bundles in rotatory instabilitiesThe American Journal of Sports Medicine, 1979
- A technique for calculating in vivo ligament lengths with application to the human knee jointJournal of Biomechanics, 1978
- Strain Gauge Analysis of Knee LigamentsClinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 1977
- The intercondylar shelf and the anterior cruciate ligamentThe American Journal of Sports Medicine, 1977
- An analytical model of the kneeJournal of Biomechanics, 1976
- The effects of flexion and rotation on the length patterns of the ligaments of the kneeJournal of Biomechanics, 1973