On June 19th, tennis player Juan Martin del Potro slipped on the grass during his Queen’s Club Championships match against Denis Shapovalov and injured his knee. Del Potro finished the match with a victory, but had pain and swelling in his knee. He withdrew from the tournament and scans of an unspecified type revealed that he fractured his right patella, or kneecap. Del Potro previously fractured his right patella in October 2018 after falling during a match in Shanghai.
The patella is the small bone that sits in front of the knee joint. It’s unusual to fracture it and be able to complete a tennis match. That would be either a non-displaced fracture or perhaps tendinopathy with an accessory patella ossicle being referred to or misidentified as a fracture.
Following his first injury in Shanghai, Del Potro opted for PRP (Platelet-Rich Plasma) therapy on his knee. In PRP, a concentration of a patient’s own platelets is injected into an injury site, which speeds up the healing of injured muscles, ligaments, tendons, or joints. This is an unproved treatment typically used for tendon issues. It’s experimental for every indication, but particularly so for fractures.
After his recent injury, however, Del Potro chose to have surgery. According to Del Potro’s team, he had a successful operation on June 22nd during which the surgeon removed a bone fragment. Again, it’s not entirely clear what is going on, but this is not typical of a patella fracture.
Del Potro has a long history of tennis-related injuries. Since 2009, he has undergone three surgeries on his left wrist as well as one on his right wrist. Del Potro stated that his doctors decided his recent knee surgery was the best treatment option not just for tennis, but also for his overall health and quality of life outside of sports.
Del Potro has confirmed that he will not be playing again in 2019. The 30-year-old also stated that he is unsure whether he played his last match of professional tennis and will wait to see how his recovery goes before making a decision.