Patello-femoral disease

This chronic condition is also called chondromalacia patella is the most common cause of chronic knee pain. In the knee there are three main bones, there's the long thigh bone, the femur then the shin bone, the tibia, and then the kneecap (patella). There's a groove in our femur where the patella should track and in quite a lot of people that doesn't track well and that usually is due to a combination of an imbalance in the muscle strength and flexibility and so the patella, the kneecap rubs on the femur underneath and causes some irritation and pain. And so it usually causes some pain when you exercise, often the knee will swell up after you exercise as well. In that particularly situation that patella-femoral syndrome the muscle strength is really important. So it's really important that the quadriceps, which is the big muscle at the front of the thigh, is strong and keeps it in track but the hamstrings at the back and the muscles at the front also have to be stretched and flexible, so exercise is the most important treatment.