Patello-Femoral Syndrome |
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What is it? |
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Patello-femoral Syndrome (PFS) is characterized by knee pain across the front of knee cap with stair climbing, athletic activities and after prolonged sitting. PFS is often caused by weakness or imbalance of the quadriceps muscles in the front of the thigh. The imbalance usually involves a weak vastus medialis and a much stronger vastus lateralis (see fig A). This imbalance causes the knee cap (patella) to track abnormally in the patellar groove. Normal tracking allows the knee cap to fit snuggly within a groove on the femur (upper thigh bone), when the knee cap moves out of that groove, the underside of the knee cap grinds against the bone of the femur and causes pain. Fig A: |
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