Background: Meniscal ramp lesions have gained much prominence in recent years due to a significant increase in their diagnosis and their important biomechanical involvement in the knee. A new proposed classification of these lesions has recently been published.
Purpose: To evaluate the reproducibility of the new classification of meniscal ramp lesions recently published using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Material and methods: A total of 249 post-traumatic knee MRI studies were evaluated by three musculoskeletal radiologists independently. Patients with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear on MRI in addition to a recent history of trauma to the knee for <12 months were included in the study, for a total of 95. We carried out an inter-observer concordance study to analyze whether the new classification is reproducible to detect meniscal ramp lesions and to classify them into their different types.
Results: Among our study cohort of 95 patients, we found 47 (49.5%) ramp lesions. In the inter-observer study, we obtained a good concordance (k = 0.733) in the detection of these lesions and an excellent one (k = 0.843) when the type of lesion is described.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the new classification of meniscal ramp lesions has good reproducibility on MRI.
Keywords: Ramp lesion; knee instability; magnetic resonance imaging; meniscocapsular ligament; meniscotibial ligament.