Reconstruction of medial patellofemoral ligament arthroscopically assisted: a prospective case series with short-term clinical follow-up

The medial patellofemoral ligament (MPFL) is one of the most important anatomical structure that stabilize the patella, during its injury a repetitive dislocation occurs. The reconstruction of this ligament, it seeks to avoid the recurrence of these episodes, for which there are various surgical techniques, one of these the arthroscopy, it can reduce adverse events of the procedure. The aim of this study is to describe the clinical follow-up of patients who had a reconstruction of the MPFL arthroscopically assisted. This is a prospective case series carried out in two hospitals of Medellín city, between 2010 and 2016. For the clinical follow-up, Lysholm, Kujala and Tegner knee scores were performed before and 12 months after the surgical procedure. Were applied Shapiro Wilk tests to evaluate normality and T-student to compare the results of the scores. We follow fifteen patients, 16 reconstructions of MPFL, of these 12 were female. The average time between the first dislocation and surgery was 12 months. Statistically significant differences were found when comparing the three scores before and after surgery (p= <0.05). Most patients improved pain and no patient required reoperation in the follow-up period. The reconstruction of MPFL arthroscopically assisted is a minimal access method that allows identifying the anatomical insertions of the MPFL, and is a safe technique that causes low morbidity and satisfactory clinical evolution of the patients.