This 19-year-old male presents with left knee pain. The patient had an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) repair three years prior. When looking through the images, think about the following questions: Q1 – What is a common pitfall when diagnosing meniscal tears of the posterior horn of the lateral meniscus? Q2 – How can a Wrisberg… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Knee
Upon checking out the joint, we found lots of bodies
This 54-year-old male presents with right knee pain that has continued for a year with no known injury. Have a look at images 1 through 3, and see if anything stands out. Q1 – What is the most likely diagnosis? Q2 – What is the differential diagnosis for the intraarticular bodies? A1 – The most… Read more »
Have you ever measured the alpha angle in a knee?
This 50-year-old female presents with knee pain. There is no known injury, but the patient did have anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) repair 15 years earlier. Q1 – How would you measure the alpha angle in this case? You may think I have lost my mind, and the wrong case is displayed, but I assure you… Read more »
There is pain and swelling, but where is the source?
This 27-year-old male presents with pain and swelling in the anterior left knee. The symptoms began eight months prior. There was no known injury or previous surgery. Have a look at images 1 through 3, and see if anything stands out. Do not be distracted by the obvious finding. The images show normal menisci, ligaments,… Read more »
He didn’t like what was on his plate, but couldn’t return it
This 55-year-old male presents with right knee pain, and his history indicates no known knee injury, surgery, or cancer. Q1 – You are shown a sagittal T1 (image 1) and axial T2 (image 2) of the patella. What is wrong with the plate? Q2 – What is the name of the plate indicated in question… Read more »
ACL contusion patterns: The importance of medial sided contusions
This 52-year-old male presents with knee pain following an injury one week ago. Q1 – What is the most likely mechanism of injury in this individual with an ACL tear? Q2 – What are the potential internal derangements associated with this knee contusion pattern? A1 – Image 7 demonstrates an acute ACL tear (blue… Read more »
What can be learned from this 17-year-old’s knee injury?
This 17-year-old male reports with knee pain following a football injury. Be sure to size up the case by looking at the first two images without arrows before looking at the same images with arrows to indicate key findings. What are the anatomical structures indicated by the arrows? Hint: While this patient’s anterior cruciate ligament… Read more »
What type of tear is causing this 20-year-old athlete’s knee pain?
This is a 20-year-old college athlete who plays soccer, competing for a national championship in his senior year. He has anterolateral knee pain. You are shown two coronal PD SPIR images (image 1 and image 2), a sagittal T2 SPIR or fat-suppression image (image 3), and a sagittal T1 (image 4). Q1 – How would… Read more »
How should you approach this 24-year-old’s knee case?
This 24-year-old reports for a knee MRI. She reports no injury, but her knee is misaligned and pain is worse with activity. Q1 – What do you call the type of image shown on image 1? Q2 – What parameter on MRI is varied to achieve such a map? Q3 – What is the name… Read more »
Be careful with knee cases like this one
This 13-year-old boy fell 1-2 weeks ago and has been experiencing knee pain. You are shown one sagittal and one coronal water-weighted image of the lateral meniscus. Q1 – What shall we name his diagnosis? Bonus points if you can also come up with the diagnosis this is known to simulate. His diagnosis is… Read more »
