Patella Realignment

It looks like my wife may need patella realignment surgery. Her condition has been ongoing for several years, but was never properly diagnosed. I’ve been reading up on this and the success rate of these procedures are not impressive. I read where lateral release has an extemely low success rate. I am very hesitant about these realignment procedures. Does anyone have experience with this? She is an avid weightlifter and is very concerned!

My girlfriend had the lateral release surgery when she was a teenager. Kneecap still dislocated a bit after that, but it seemed to calm down as she got older. The kneecap feels pretty unstable to me, and still causes her some pain. She cannot do squats however, but can do other leg workouts.
The “big” surgery is a big risk; they move around a lot of things and can never go back to the way they were before. I personally dislocated my kneecap 3 times. Two times were within a week. I opted for extensive physical therapy which seemed to work well.
You might want to consider prolotherapy. I am not sure if there are any statistics on it’s success rate. I’ve had it on my shoulder and neck successfully, and was considering it for my kneecap before it calmed down.

Good luck with this situation.

I’d boogie over to Eric Cressey’s locker room thread and ask him about it.

I say hold off on surgery as long as possible. The surgery can make things worse, so, if it’s bearable, live with it. Surgery could make it unbearable.

With regard to physical therapy. Try to figure out what makes it feel better and quickly eliminate that which doesn’t. Don’t listen to a PT if they want her to do something that causes pain or even feels uncomfortable. Don’t let them tape her cap in any way.

Well, I don’t know what to tell you, it is a shitty situation. I had 2 knee surgeries about 2 years ago, both of them due to patella issues. A lot of people will say that by strengthening the VMO it can hold the knee-cap in place. In my case, that was not the case, My leg muscles were extremely strong & balanced & I still was dislocating & tearing the patellar tendon.

My first surgery was to repair the patellar tendon: it had so many microtears that it was literally eating away at itself, they went in & cleaned/repaired it & that made a big difference in that localized pain. However, I was still having other pain, so he went in & did a lateral release, scope & trimmed the plyka (sp?).

After that surgery, my knee subluxed 2 times (dislocates & goes back in) before calming down. 2 years later, I am doing much more than I could ever do b/f the surgery, I am now doing OL & am back to moderate runs on trails (not streets!). So, I feel like it was beneficial in my situation where PT & strengthening were not working. It sounds like if she is a weightlifter, it is probably not a lack of strength like so many DR.'s will say.

It will make a big difference going into the surgery if she has some good strength though. I’m not going to say that I don’t have pain, but it is far less than before the surgery. Something to think about seems that when you have 1 knee surg., it can often lead to more (my case). At this point, I would be hesitant to do a lateral release again, especially if her kneecap is extremely loose, their is not way for me to say it actually helped. Hope this make sense, she or you can PM me if needed.

Yeah. She has the strength, but her hips were turned in when she was born and that may have led to her knee displacements.

[quote]nolecat wrote:
Yeah. She has the strength, but her hips were turned in when she was born and that may have led to her knee displacements.[/quote]

A few more details, she never actually “popped” it out of place while training, etc…it’s just increased loss of stability. I found some additional threads on this from other “victims”…she goes back in to see the ortho in june. I’ll keep posted…thanks again for your responses and help!!

I had that surgery in college 7 yrs ago and it turned out fine. I am now a powerlifter and I have no problems with my knee. I would talk to the Dr. doing the surgery and find out his background. Ofcourse she will lose some range of motion. I will never wrestle again. Hope this helps.

[quote]rich44 wrote:
I had that surgery in college 7 yrs ago and it turned out fine. I am now a powerlifter and I have no problems with my knee. I would talk to the Dr. doing the surgery and find out his background. Ofcourse she will lose some range of motion. I will never wrestle again. Hope this helps.[/quote]

Good point with that. While I can do my OL fine, I can’t do things like rockclimbing very well b/c of the ROM & angles required.

I had problems with my left knee when I was playing college football, and then one game I tore my MCL. When they did the surgery they did a lateral release also and now it tracks so much better. The grinding has gone way down, and it doesn’t hurt after leg days.

DO NOT do this surgery before exploring other options i had a lateral release done about 6 months ago and my knee was worse after the surgery and PT than before the surgery.
IMO go see somebody who does ART and have them work on you wife’s knee, after my surgery ART(active release technique) is the only thing that actually helped me regain almost normal fuctioning of my knee.

My chiro told me that i should have came to hime before the surgery becuase the surgery had altered my tissue so it was hard to work with. I regret ever getting a lateral release, my knee will never be the same again, if i had gotten ART or some other type of soft tissue work done on my kneee before i wouldve probably been much better off.

Before you even start considering surgery explore other more non invasive types of treatment.