Osgood-Schlatter Disease

A common abnormality you will see on lateral knee x-rays is some well-corticated bone fragments in front of the tibial tuberosity, as in this case from a 16 year old boy. These fragments (indicated by the arrows in the magnified image, right) are in the patellar tendon and are due to an inflammatory process called Osgood-Schlatter disease at the junction between the tendon and bone, that typically occurs in adolescents, more commonly boys, and causes anterior knee pain with a palpable bump. The fragments may persist long after the symptoms resolve, and so we often see this appearance in adult patients.