Assessing patellar tracking during total knee arthroplasty: a technical note

Achieving proper patellar tracking is one of the most important goals of total knee arthroplasty, as postoperative patellar complications are common. Patellar tracking is influenced by several factors, including component positioning and tightness of the lateral retinaculum. Various techniques such as the no thumb and towel clip tests have been described to assess adequacy of intraoperative patellar tracking. We propose a novel technique, the vertical patella test, which is a simple and reliable technique to assess the tightness of the lateral retinaculum. This method should be used in addition to the currently used techniques and needs to be validated in a prospective comparative study.