Full‐limb and knee radiography assessments of varus‐valgus alignment and their relationship to osteoarthritis disease features by magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

In knee OA, the knee radiograph femur-tibia and full-limb radiograph hip-knee-ankle angles were correlated. The femur-tibia angle, corrected for mean offset, was sensitive, specific, and had excellent discriminative ability for identifying varus and valgus alignment evidenced by area under the ROC curve. The relationship between alignment and specific OA MRI features was comparable with the 2 approaches. Use of the femur-tibia angle, corrected for offset, should be considered in research and clinical settings.