Osgood-Schlatter Disease
Other Known Aliases – tibial tubercle apophysitis
Definition – inflammation of the patellar tendon at the insertion of the tibial tuberosity
Clinical Significance – Seen in adolescent athletes who participates in sports with repeated jumping or overloading of the knee in the bent position. This repetitive trauma on the open growth plates causes the painful separation of the tuberosity from the anterior tibia and manifests as a painful “bump”. Pain will persist until the epiphysis closes, but a persistent bump will remain. Treatment is with rest, NSAIDs, unloading bracing, and potentially casting in knee extension.
History – Named after two physician who contemporaneously studied this condition. Robert Bayley Osgood (1873-1956), an American orthopaedic surgeon who received his medical doctorate from Harvard University in 1899, and Carl Schlatter (1863-1934), a Swiss surgeon who received his medical doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1889. Osgood would spend his career at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital culminating in Professor of Surgery and Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at both of these institutions. He would help write one of the first textbooks on orthopaedic surgery called “Diseases of the Bones and Joints” and creating one of the first structured orthopaedic residencies in the US at Harvard University. Schlatter surgery training started under Billroth in Vienna and would go on to perform the world’s first gastrectomy with end-to-end esophago-jejunostomy in 1897. Both published case reports and observations of this disease process in 1903
References
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- Up To Date. www.uptodate.com
- Nowinski RJ, Mehlman CT. Hyphenated history: Osgood-Schlatter disease. Am J Orthop (Belle Mead NJ). 1998; 27(8):584-5. [pubmed]
- Osgood RB. Lesions of the tibial tubercle occurring during adolescence. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 1903; 148: 114-117
- Schlatter C. Verletzungen des schnabelförmigen Forsatzes der oberen Tibiaepiphyse. Beitrage zur klinischen Chirurgie, 1903; 38: 874-887
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