Assessment of the Radiographic Angular Parameters in the Coronal Plane of the Lower Limbs in Subjects without Knee Osteoarthritis in a Reference Hospital of the Brazilian Unified Health System.

The present study aims to demonstrate the radiological angular parameters of a sample of patients treated at our institution and to compare the radiological abnormalities with other classifications or parameters from the literature.  We evaluated a sample of patients submitted to panoramic radiographic examinations of the lower limbs. The inclusion criteria were: (1) Patients without knee osteoarthritis as assessed by an orthopedist. (2) Bilateral radiographic evaluation in the panoramic examination of the lower limbs. (3) Panoramic radiographic examination of the lower limbs before any surgical procedure. (4) Patients over 18 years old.  We analyzed a total of 1,242 lower limbs. The axis was neutral in 875 lower limbs (70.4%). The main etiology was non-traumatic, with a varus deviation of the tibial segment in 253 cases and the deformity apex in the proximal third of the tibial segment. A valgus deviation of the mechanical axis was more common in non-traumatic etiologies (82.3%). Per the Coronal Plane Alignment of the Knee (CPAK) classification, type I was the most frequent (44.8%), followed by type III (37.1%).  We identified changes in the angular parameters in patients from a reference hospital from the Brazilian Unified Health System which were different from population samples from other countries.