Recent population studies on the prevalence and bilaterality of the fabella

Abstract

The fabella is a sesamoid bone found in the gastrocnemius muscle that is present in about 10-30% of all humans. There are however strong variations between different ethnics groups. The current review summarizes the literature regarding the prevalence and laterality of the fabella in recently published population studies. Six eligible population studies published in 2020 and 2021 were identified that investigated the prevalence of the fabella in Chinese, Korean, Nigerian, Omani and Turkish populations. The fabella prevalence rate in the included studies ranged from 11.1 to 57.2%. However, like in past research, there were significant variations between different populations in recent studies. Unfortunately, only a selected number of the recently published studies reported on the percentage of fabellae that present uni- or bilaterally. The percentage of cases that showed a bilateral fabella ranged from 27.1 to 78.8%.