The Effects of Patellofemoral Pain on Landing Mechanics

Individuals that suffer from patellofemoral pain and those that do not are likely to demonstrate different landing mechanics. The purpose of this study was to explore differences of those individuals in landing motion mechanics. Two participants, one with symptoms of knee pain and one who was asymptomatic performed a drop landing task. In this study, we compared the landing mechanics of a box jump from both the frontal and sagittal planes in the two individuals. Markers were placed on each participant’s shoulder, iliac crest, thigh, knee, ankle, toe, and heel. We used camera video to capture the landings, and Kinovea software was used to process the data. We examined the landing time, joint angle, and path of each marker during each trial. We had originally hypothesized that the distance between the knees would be smaller in the symptomatic individual, but it was not observed with our data. However, the symptomatic individual showed a larger variability in hip movement during the landings. The opposite was observed in the asymptomatic individual, where there was greater knee movement compared to hip movement in each landing. This could be due to the symptomatic individual relying on their hips more during landing to compensate for their knee pain. Injuries and pain can often change the way we perform actions and movements. The findings of this study can be utilized to inform preventative sports medicine