Lower Extremity Function in Individuals with Medial Knee Displacement

Poor alignment of the lower extremity during functional activities has been shown to increase the likelihood of sustaining a noncontact knee injury. While field-based movement screenings are frequently utilized to identify “high risk” individuals based off of frontal plane movement at the knee, these evaluations have primarily been bilateral. Corresponding with the dynamic unilateral tasks that often occur in athletics, clinicians have recently incorporated the the single leg squat (SLS) to screen for dysfunctional movement through the observation of medial knee displacement (MKD). This screening has not been validated, and individuals with and without MKD have not been evaluated to determine whether specific movement strategies exist within each group. Injury prevention programs are often implemented in athletic populations with the goal of reducing noncontact knee injury risk. The programs that have shown the greatest success have all incorporated some form of feedback into their design. While positive changes have been observed when feedback is implemented during dynamic tasks, similar results have not been observed during traditional lower extremity exercises that are slow and repetitive. Therefore, the purpose of this study was compare the visual SLS test for MKD to the knee valgus angle measured on 3DMA (Manuscript 1) and to then compare SLS movement patterns between individuals with and without MKD (Manuscript 2). We subsequently evaluated the effect of a one-session visual feedback intervention focused on correcting frontal plane knee kinematics, in individuals with MKD (Manuscript 3).