I recently attended a professional development course about patellofemoral pain syndrome. What!? That’s ‘FRONT of KNEE pain’ to you and I. It interests me as someone who has had it while training for a marathon and it’s a symptom I hear about daily in clinic from my patients. It was time to update the knowledge base.
Here are a few points I was reminded of and that I thought you might be interested in hearing about:
- 5 million runners will have Kneecap related pain at some point in their life (US study Crossley 2004).
- Kneecap related pain in the US accounts for up to 7.3% of all insurance claims (Glaviano et al 2015), and that’s not just within health insurance.. ALL INSURANCE CLAIMS.
- In my physio practice it is as common as low back pain – Very common!
- Really interesting reminder. Cartilage is ANEURAL – this means cartilage doesn’t have any nerve endings in it. What this means to you and I is that if you have been told by your GP that you have mild-moderate cartilage wear and tear in your knee, that wear and tear may not be producing the pain. It’s often more to do with the muscles and soft tissue around it and Physio’s can do something about this without the need for surgery!
Pictures speak louder than words have a look at this video for an idea of some of the detailed technical factors Chartered Physiotherapists assess when dealing with your knee issue:
And even more info can be found in this article which discusses some of the bad advice been handed out about this issue.
http://runningreform.com/femoral-anteversion-craigs-test-and-poor-advice/
It might give you an idea of the detail we go to in our assessments. Want to know if your knee issues are related to a positional genetic hip issue or just due to a muscular imbalance with poor motor firing which can be corrected with a graded and tailored exercise program. Just give us a shout.
Thanks to consultant physiotherapist Claire Robertson, MSc PGCE MSCP of Wimbledon Clinics for teaching us!