Hayashi Yasufumi
Tokyo Metropolitan Rehabilitation Hospital, Japan.
Clin Calcium. 2008 Jan;18(1):103-8.
Osgood-Schlatter's disease is a self-limited disease of young athletes who are suffered from a pain of the motion at the tibial tubercle. As ossification center of tibial tubercle in the boy between the ages of 10 and 17 years is not fused to tibial bone and is fragile, so a kind of avulsion fracture is occurred in the tibial tubercle by the powerful quadriceps tendon during adolescent development. In the disease, tenderness and warmth, redness, swelling are recognized at the tibial tubercle. X-ray film of the knee shows the avulsed pieces and separated fragments of bone in addition to swelling of soft tissue at the tibial tubercle. As a pain of the knee in the disease would disappear within 6 months or so, conservative treatments should be advised to the patient such as reduced athletic activity, quadriceps stretching before the sports. Knee band and wet pack including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are also effective to relieve the pain.