Pain in the patellar tendon

Excerpt

The origin of pain in tendinosis has been discussed several times by me in Editorials of this journal. Much of my interest has arisen due to the sports medicine group in Umeå—at one of Sweden’s Northernmost universities. Their chief professor Ronnie Lorentzon and his junior colleague Håkan Alfredson, particularly, have really made me reconsider the point of origin of pain in tendons. Since we are all orthopaedic surgeons, it is natural to believe that there should be an anatomical injury that is the cause and an injury which we could repair or excise. Alfredson and his colleagues have cast serious doubts over this assumption. Today, we are beginning to understand that chronic pain is caused by small nerves following the capillaries that supply blood for the healing of the tendon lesion. …