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. 2019 Sep-Oct;10(5):995-998.
doi: 10.1016/j.jcot.2018.06.006. Epub 2018 Jun 22.

Prospective comparative study of intraoperative "Towel clip test" and "Vertical patella test" assessing lateral retinaculum tightness in patients undergoing TKA

Anjul Verma  1 , Rajesh Lalchandani  1
Affiliations

Prospective comparative study of intraoperative "Towel clip test" and "Vertical patella test" assessing lateral retinaculum tightness in patients undergoing TKA

Anjul Verma et al. J Clin Orthop Trauma. 2019 Sep-Oct.

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: Proper patellar tracking is one of the most important aspect of TKA to ensure good functional outcome. A patellar tracking problem noted intraoperatively serves as a warning sign and should prompt the surgeon to reassess position of each component. Various tests are there to assess lateral retinaculum tightness viz. "No thumb test", "Towel clip test". A new test "Vertical patella test" is described to assess lateral retinaculum tightness. A study was conducted to assess the effectiveness, correlation and validity of two techniques.

Materials & methods: Patients >50 years of age and with diagnosis of Osteoarthritis knee having less than 30 varus and flexion deformity going in for primary TKA were selected with a sample size of 100 knees in a tertiary care centre. Revision cases or patients with flexion contracture more than 30, complex knee surgery; with pre existing patellar tilt were excluded from study.

Results: Results of both tests were found to correlate in 75% of case with sensitivity of 96.65% and specificity of 75.00%. Kappa came out to be 0.634 which shows good agreement of vertical patella test and towel clip test. Result was computed using excel and SPSS and was found to be significant with p value< 0.05. Lateral retinaculum release was done in 8 knees.

Conclusions: Vertical patella test correlates with towel clip test, is easy to perform and saves time. The limitation of our study was small sample size.

Keywords: Patellar tracking; Total knee arthroplasty; Towel clip test; Vertical patella test.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Towel clip test.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Vertical patella test - superior view.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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