Abstract
Genu recurvatum is characterized as an hyperextension deformity of the knee in the sagittal plane, with impacts on walking, pelvis tilting and also on ankle’s and foot’s biomechanics. Amongst its causes are conditions like cerebral palsy, poliomyelitis, arthrogryposis, tibial tuberosity arrest and syndromes with generalized ligamentous hyperlaxity. Specially in cerebral palsy, factories like hamstrings lengthening and equinus deformity of the foot can produce this knee condition. The treatment methods to correct this deformity are more aggressive to date, such as quadricepsplasty, hamstring tenomyoplasty and femur or tibia osteotomies.
We describe here the treatment of a patient with mild hemiparetic hypertonic cerebral palsy GMSCF I, with unilateral genu recurvatum, using a safe and minimally invasive technique with posterior hemiepiphysiodesis of the distal femur, performed with two transphyseal cannulated screws for correction. This technique has great potential for correcting the recurvatum knee in the immature skeleton during growth and can be a good alternative to the more aggressive methods currently used for the treatment of this deformity