Beware of studies like this one about MPFL reconstruction that only have one year of follow-up. In this small study of only 43 patients who underwent MPFL reconstruction (some bilateral) with a strong suture, they demonstrated that most patients were stable at a year.
We know that most patients are just resuming pivoting sports at a year and may not have really put their knee to the test at that point. What is concerning about this study is that they didn’t risk stratify the patients. That is, they didn’t look at the types of sports the patients were participating in and did not appear to tailor the type of surgery to specific bony risk factors.
While there is nothing like long term follow-up, it isn’t possible with new techniques — but it means we should proceed with caution. The editorial to this study follows in the attached link and points out several deficiencies with this paper.
