Clinical Investigation of Knee-Joint Sounds in Patients With Patellofemoral Syndrome

Abstract

Patellofemoral syndrome is a common disorder of the knee-joint that is known to present difficulty in clinical assessment, diagnosis and treatment. Currently, clinicians use various conservative and non-conservative methods for treating the disorder, but there are no tools for providing good, quantitative measures of their effectiveness. The goal of this research is to look at the use of knee-joint sound as a clinical tool for progress assessment in rehabilitation of patellofemoral syndrome. There is a significant amount of literature on the use of acoustics in joint research, including the knee-joint. In the literature on knee-joint sound analysis, many researchers have attempted to use sound as a diagnostic tool. It is often problematic to try and identify a single, acoustic ‘signature’ that is characteristic of a specific disorder. In this research, relative changes in joint sounds will be used in analysis rather than absolute measurement. Changes of the knee-joint sounds throughout different treatment modalities will be compared to the patient base line in order to provide an indicator of treatment progress.