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Anatomy and morphometrics of the radial head: an anthropometric study on dried cadaveric radiae
Margarita-Michaella Ampadiotaki1, Ioannis Antonopoulos1, Evmorfia Pechlivanidou2
1Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Anatomy, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Background:
The radial head (RH) is in close relationship with the elbow ligaments and is crucial for the elbow biomechanics. Comminuted RH fractures and radiocapitellar arthritis are indications for RH excision and replacement with a prosthesis. An RH prosthesis should closely resemble the natural anatomy both in size and shape. This anthropometric study collects raw data on the shape and size of the RH and investigates correlations between RH measurements and other radius landmarks to help design more anatomically accurate RH prostheses.
Methods:
The present study was conducted on 68 dried radiae. The measurements were conducted using a digital Vernier caliper. Descriptive statistics concerning mean and standard deviation (SD) for the measurements following normal distribution and median and interquartile range (IQR) for those not were used. All measurements were treated as continuous variables. Stata, version 14, software was used for the analysis.
Results:
The median anteroposterior diameter of the RH was 19.71 (IQR 18.41-21.88), and the respective values for the transverse one were 19.57 (IQR 18.11-20.95). The mean radial length was 226.78 mm (SD 17.46) and the mean fovea depth was 1.85 mm (SD 0.38). Furthermore, we developed a model that predicts the fovea depth with a minimum mean difference of -0.7 mm and a maximum of 0.8 mm. Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients revealed strong linear relationship between most of the measurements assessed in the present study.
Conclusions:
We believe our study is the first to suggest predicting collinearity between radius metrics using the standard morphometric approach for raw data, favoring measurement accuracy and reliability. Radial length collinearity to all other measurements would help when normal growth is interrupted by trauma or disease in pediatric orthopedic patients, and fovea depth prediction with simple radiographic measurements could aid intraoperative planning for radial head replacement with prosthesis.
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