50 Years Ago in CORR: Recurrent Dislocating Patella: A Long-Term Follow-up Study James B. Jones, MD, Kenneth C. Francis, MD, John R. Mahoney, MD CORR 1961;20:230–240

Excerpt

Dislocation of the patella has been long recognized, although recurrent dislocation more recently so. Hippocrates appears not to have mentioned recurrent dislocations [10, 11]. A number of mid-19th century surgeons described patellar dislocation [2, 7, 15], but not those that were recurrent. Goldthwait [6], in 1896, briefly described one patient with long-standing bilateral recurrent dislocation in whom he performed lateral release and medial reefing. The minutes of a meeting of the orthopaedic subsection of the Royal College of Medicine in discussion, held in March 1921, noted that Bristow briefly mentioned a procedure in which the tibial tubercle was transplanted medially [1]. “He would suggest that transplantation of the tubercle with the tendon attached was a better procedure than transplanting the tendon alone, the union of bone to bone being better able to combat strain.” Hauser reviewed six types of procedures used by various authors to treat recurrent dislocation of the patella, then provided a detailed description of his procedure to transfer the tibial tubercle medially [8, 9]. He appeared to have been unaware of the brief note of the earlier suggestion by Bristow. In the first edition of his classic textbook, Campbell detailed many varieties of operations and their variations [3]. Clearly, the recurrent dislocation was well recognized by the 1930s with a profusion of surgical alternatives. …