Patellar chondropathy: definition, symptoms, causes, diagnosis and treatment of jumper's knee

By Cristiano Antonino On May 3, 2023

Cartilage injuries: patellar chondropathy is the disease or injury of the articular cartilage of the patella that manifests itself with localised pain at the front of the knee

Causes of patellar chondropathy

Patellar injury, also known as patellofemoral syndrome, is one of the most frequent traumatic processes, especially in sportsmen, and is due to multiple causes.

The inflammation is also known by the term ‘jumper’s knee’

This is because it is mainly athletes who strain the knee, putting it under stress with jumps; this is why volleyball players and basketball players are among the sportsmen involved.

Causes include: repeated trauma to the knee, and overuse of repetitive movements over a long period of time, leading to compression of the cartilage; structural factors such as knee alignment or patella position; metabolic factors such as a lack of vascularisation of the bone under the cartilage; pathological factors such as cartilage degeneration.

Diagnosis of patellar chondropathy

It is often the case that there is no specific correlation between pain and anatomical damage and therefore the diagnosis initially may not be intuitive: for example, one may be faced with very painful and disabling processes with minimal cartilage involvement.

For diagnosis, MRI with contrast is useful to detect advanced lesions.

The definitive diagnosis of patellar chondropathy is made by arthroscopy, which assesses the condition of the cartilage or the existence of lesions not previously detected by MRI, or when pain persists despite the measures taken to contain it.