What's special about the kneecap.

Although it is a bone, the kneecap (patella) is actually contained right within the tendon of the quads muscle. This is very unusual in the body - to find a bone inside a tendon (a 'sesamoid' bone) - and what it means in reality is that any alteration of the direction of forces in the whole quads muscle/tendon/bone complex has to affect the patella.

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Dr Elizabeth A Arendt - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Dr Roland Biedert - Magglingen, Switzerland

There are quite a lot of medical words that need to be absorbed before one can confidently talk about the patella and its problems, and the extensor mechanism falls into that group.

The patella (kneecap) is a 'sesamoid bone'. A sesamoid bone is a bone that develops in a muscle tendon, rather than being attached by ligaments to another bone. The tendon in which the patella develops is the tendon of the quadriceps muscle, the big muscle that makes up the bulk of your 'lap'.