[Morphometric parameters of the intercondylar notch, gender and age differences].

INTRODUCTION: Narrow intercondylar notch of femur can lead to lean anterior cruciate ligament on femur's condyle, constraint and rupture.

PURPOSE: Purpose of this study is description and comparasion gender and oldage differencies of morphometric factors of intercondylar notch important for rupture LCA.

METHOD: The measurements were taken on 50 cadaverous knees (32 male and 18 female) with intact anterior cruciate ligament, aged from 15 to 53 years. We measured intercondylar height and epicondylar width, intercondylar width, width of lateral and medial condyle in level of popliteal sulcus and on the widest place of the distal part of femur. We calculated notch width (NWI) and notch shape (NSI) indices from absolute measurements.

RESULTS: Notch width and epicondylar width, have larger values (p < 0.01) on the male (22.3 i 79.6 mm) than the female (18.2 i 68.7 mm). There is no statistical significant differences (p < 0.05) about notch width and notch shape indices between male (NWI: 0.28; NSI: 0.77) and female (NWI: 0.27; NSI: 0.68). Aging epicondylar width rise.