19/01/2023
Patella-Femoral Pain (PFP)💥
Is often described as a poorly localized pain around the knee cap.
Often irritable to ascending stairs, squatting, lunging and running 🏃🏼♂️
One of the many contributing factors to PFP can be muscle tightness in the quadriceps muscle group.
Tension in the quadriceps muscle and patella tendon drives the patella into the surface of the distal femur creating an increased patella femoral joint reaction force 💥
Clinically we can get a pretty good idea of the quadriceps tension by performing the Thomas Test.
Ideally in the Thomas test you want to see the knee flexion angle rest close to 90 degrees. This would indicate a good resting muscle length in the quadriceps.
As you can see in my client he rests in a significant knee extension angle which would indicate a tight quadriceps muscle group which would result in an increase in patella femoral joint reaction force and therefore could be a contributing factor to his knee pain.
We addressed this by performing a dry needling treatment of the quadriceps and performed some corrective lengthening exercises for homework.
Check photo 2 for the before and after affects of the dry needling treatment alone.
This client will have to be diligent to his home exercise program and gradually reintroduce loading to the knee as pain and inflammation settles.
Follow along for further PFP rehab information and tips!
