Figure 2.

The importance of preoperative planning. This is an alignment study of a 25-year-old male with complaints of medial knee pain. His extremity alignment study shows varus alignment, with displacement of the mechanical axis to the medial compartment of the left knee. He was told that he would benefit of a knee arthroscopy for the management of a medial meniscal tear. The patient was also told that a possible high tibial osteotomy to correct the varus deformity would be necessary. We were asked to evaluate the patient and we confirmed that his mechanical proximal tibial angle was withing normal values (86.4 degrees), but the varus was originated on the distal femur (abnormal mLDFA superior to 90 degrees). In this case, preoperative planning was able to identify that the correct site for the osteotomy in this case would be the distal femur and not the proximal tibia.