When knee pain is of muscular origin, the quadriceps, hamstrings, popliteus and gastroc muscles are the most common causes. If treatment of those muscles doesn’t relieve pain, therapists might think about these tips for solving the pain puzzle: Pes anserinus, short adductors, ITB\/TFL, a Baker’s cyst, or chondromalacia.<\/p>\n
Remember this odd name from your therapy training? Pes anserinus <\/strong>means goose-footed and refers to the three-part attachment of tendons below the knee on the inside surface of the tibia below the condyle. The three tendons belong to the sartorius, gracilis and semitendinosus muscles<\/strong>. All three are long muscles crossing both the hip and knee joints. In addition to pain that may be coming from injury to the tendons themselves, there may be pain from the bursa beneath them or from Trigger Points that refer to or across the medial or posterior knee. All three have tendinous inscriptions that call for treating the entire length of the muscle to release tension. Also note that the sartorius can entrap the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve and produce tingling and numbness of the lateral thigh.<\/p>\n The adductors longus and brevis <\/strong>at the groin refer pain to the knee. Ask the patient about groin tension and test for it with passive ROM. If present, treat these muscles deeply, examining for local and referred pain and finishing with active stretching.<\/p>\n The iliotibial band (ITB)<\/strong> can have an impact on knee pain because it attaches at and below the knee (ITB friction syndrome). The tensor fascia lata (TFL)<\/strong> has tendon fibers that join and tense (tensor) the broad fascia (fascia lata) that surrounds the thigh. Other tendon fibers extend directly to the knee with a function of stabilizing it, so knee pain could be produced by tension on these fibers and from possible resulting joint tension.<\/p>\n A Baker’s cyst or popliteal synovial cyst<\/strong> can cause knee pain from swelling of the bursae behind the knee. The cyst is usually the result of injury or disease process in the joint. The bursae are either under the semimembranosus tendon or the medial head of the gastrocnemius. Pressure on a Baker’s cyst should be avoided.<\/p>\n A diagnosis of chondromalacia or patellofemoral syndrome<\/strong> is caused by the irritation of the kneecap rubbing too hard on the joint or tracking laterally. Presented with this condition, I go back to quadriceps tension and imbalance. See the post Knee pain: Understanding the quadriceps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When knee pain is of muscular origin, the quadriceps, hamstrings, popliteus and gastroc muscles are the most common causes. If treatment of those muscles doesn’t relieve pain, therapists might think about these tips for solving the pain puzzle: Pes anserinus, short adductors, ITB\/TFL, a Baker’s cyst, or chondromalacia. Remember this odd name from your therapy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,29],"tags":[106,139,331,353,840,846,536,695,746],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knee-pain","category-muscle-information","tag-bakers-cyst","tag-chondromalacia","tag-it-band","tag-knee-muscles","tag-knee-pain","tag-nerve-entrapment","tag-pes-anserinus","tag-stretching","tag-tingling-and-numbness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4466,"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions\/4466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbottcenter.com\/bostonpaintherapy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}