When does the patella dislocate? A systematic review of biomechanical & kinematic studies

Patellar dislocations are a significant injury with the potential for long term problems. Little work has been done on establishing the mechanism by which this injury occurs.

To determine the mechanism of injury of a patella dislocation based on the available published literature and compare them to already proposed theories.

A systematic review of the literature was conducted following searches performed on MEDLINE, EMBASE and ProQuest from the earliest year of indexing using the following search terms in any combination: "patella", "dislocation", "mechanism of injury", "anatomy", "biomechanical" and "risk factor". A broad inclusion criteria was used that included studies that looked at patellar dislocations and instability with respect to the patellofemoral joint (PFJ) kinematics or altered kinematics of the PFJ. Studies that did not address the kinematics or biomechanics of the PFJ were excluded. Studies were appraised based on their methodology using a combination of the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool and the Quality Appraisal for Cadaveric Studies.

113 studies were identified from a search of MEDLINE, EMBASE and ProQuest databases. Following application of our inclusion criteria, a total of 23 studies were included in our review. 18 of these studies were cadaveric biomechanical studies. The remaining studies were anatomical, imaging based, and a computer simulation based study.

These biomechanical and kinematic studies provide some evidence that a dislocation is likely to occur during early knee flexion with external rotation of the tibia and contraction of the quadriceps. There is limited evidence to support other elements of proposed mechanisms of dislocation.