Knee cap pain is very common in the current scenario and affects mostly young active age group, it is a pain in front and side of knee cap, usually aggravates while walking up and down the stairs, squatting or kneeling, also knows as runners knee.
The other name of this is movie goers knee or people who do sedentary office desk top work as they keep their knees bent and it leads to pain.
The main reason of misaligned knee cap(patella) where the cap is not tracking accurately in its groove and the extra friction leads to cartilage injury and in long run arthritis.
The multiple causes of PFC are:
Low back –irritated nerves which lead to weakening of butt (gluet) muscle and quadriceps which makes the quadriceps weak too and lead to friction and loss of cartilage.
Hip issues: studies have shown that biomechanics play a major role with foot turned in (internal rotation) or foot turned out (external rotation) can cause the groove for patella in femur bone to be misaligned https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20436239, this study explores how too much rotation of femur groove inside will track the knee cap to the outside and cause misalignment.
VMO muscle weakness (inner thigh muscle weakness) allows the knee cap to move too far to the outside
Patellar trauma:
Injury to the undersurface of the knee cap or the cartilage can cause arthritis
Hamstring stiffness and ITB over tightness can lead to knee cap and meniscal injury
Management and treatment:
IT involves joint preservation mechanisms along with interventions which are done under regenerative medicine techniques, which involve injecting super concentrated platelets and mesenchymal cells which are taken from iliac crest and have similar activity as stem cells under imaging followed by a well structured rehabilitation programme for better outcomes.
