Video and Transcript: What Is Patellofemoral Syndrome (PFS)?

Hi everyone! My name is Dr. Orit Hickman and I'm the owner of Pain Science Physical Therapy. And, I myself am a physical therapist as well. My last video gave you a little bit of a brief anatomy lesson of the knee. And, that was in preparation to talk about a diagnosis that we see a lot of in this clinic, and that is what's called Patellofemoral Syndrome or Patellofemoral pain. 

A lot of patients come in with knee pain. There's a variety of different reasons why this happens. Women have knee pain 2 to 1 compared to men, and some of that has to do with our anatomy. 

So, in the last video, I gave you just a really brief anatomy lesson of the knee. I'm going to show you one more thing that I didn't talk about in the last video, and that is a position of the knee that sits where your femur actually has a little bit of an angle as it comes down to attach or meet where your tibia is. In women, this angle is a little bit greater and part of that is because women have a wider pelvis. So, if you think about it, this femur bone goes all the way up to attach to the pelvis bone and it's got a little bit more of an angle if you're a woman because you have wider hips, or a wider pelvis. 

Patellofemoral Syndrome, or Patellofemoral pain, is when you have pain where the kneecap connects or meets the end of your femur bone. So, there's the end of the femur, which is -- there’s this groove here that the kneecap sits in. Now, when you bend and straighten your knee, what's supposed to happen is that knee cap is supposed to stay pretty well situated in that groove. However, one of the things that can happen is the kneecaps can slide a little bit off to one side or the other. And, the most common is that it'll slide a little bit to the outside and it'll rub on this edge of the femur bone. When it does that, it can get inflamed and irritated, and that's when you develop Patellofemoral pain. 

Patellofemoral pain has a lot of different types of symptoms associated. Lots of times, patients will say that their entire knee hurts. Sometimes, pain is more localized to one area or another. Often, there's pain just with sitting, but more than likely there's pain with standing, walking, running, going up and down the stairs. The knee can make noises. It can creak. It can pop, all of which sounds really, really scary, but really is just happening because things are irritated. And, when that happens, there's a response by your thigh muscle, your quadricep muscle, to stop working as well as it should. So, this is where your quad comes down and it encapsulates that kneecap before it attaches down here on your tibia bone. 

So, Patellofemoral Syndrome is a really, really common diagnosis. We see it a lot, and it is really well -- well treated in physical therapy. So, we see it all the time. We treat it all the time. And, in my next video, I'm going to talk about some really common exercises that we give patients who are dealing with Patellofemoral pain.

Hope this was helpful. Feel free to give me a thumbs up if you like it, and I'd love any comments down below. Have a great day!