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Background: Patellofemoral Malalignment versus Tissue Homeostasis

Myths and Truths about Patellofemoral Disease

  • Chapter
Anterior Knee Pain and Patellar Instability

Conclusions

The pathology we discuss in the present monograph presents itself with a multifactorial etiology and a great pathogenic, diagnostic, and therapeutic complexity.

The consideration of anterior knee pain to be a self-limited condition in patients with an underlying neurotic personality should be banished from the orthopedic literature.

Our knowledge about anterior knee pain has evolved throughout the twentieth century. While until the end of the 1960s this pain was attributed to chrondromalacia patellae, a concept born at the beginning of the century, after that period it came to be connected with abnormal patellofemoral alignment. More recently, the pain was put down to a wide range of physiopathological processes such as peripatellar synovitis, the increment in intraosseous pressure, and increased bone remodeling. We are now at a turning point. New information is produced at breakneck speed. Nowadays, medicine in its entirety is being reassessed at the subcellular level, and this is precisely the line of thought we are following in the approach to anterior knee pain syndrome. Still to be seen are the implications that this change of mentality will have in the treatment of anterior knee pain syndrome in the future, but I am sure that these new currents of thought will open for us the doors to new and exciting perspectives that could potentially revolutionize the management of this troublesome pathological condition in the new millennium we have just entered. Clearly, we are only at the beginning of the road that will lead to understanding where anterior knee pain comes from.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopaedics, Hospital Arnau de Vilanova, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Sanchis-Alfonso MD, PhD (Member of the International Patellofemoral Study Group)

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  1. Vicente Sanchis-Alfonso MD, PhD
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  1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hospital Arnau de Vilanova, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Sanchis-Alfonso MD, PhD (Member of the International Patellofemoral Study Group/Member of the ACL Study Group) (Member of the International Patellofemoral Study Group/Member of the ACL Study Group)

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Sanchis-Alfonso, V. (2006). Background: Patellofemoral Malalignment versus Tissue Homeostasis. In: Sanchis-Alfonso, V. (eds) Anterior Knee Pain and Patellar Instability. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-84628-143-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-84628-143-1_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84628-003-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84628-143-3

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