Minskar medial knäsmärta med ökad höftmuskelstyrka? En litteraturstudie

Abstract

Background: The knee joint is a common source of pain and the most common localization of this pain is the medial part of the humero-tibial joint. Pain can induce a change in the recruitment of muscles, there may be a change in the power and the distribution of muscle activity within the muscles in order to protect the painful structure. In addition to reduced strength in the quadriceps muscle in persons with knee joint pain, it has also been seen a decreased strength in the hip joint muscles, compared to healthy people. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether resistance training of the hip joint muscles may reduce medial knee joint pain. Method: A literature review was conducted searching the following databases, PubMed, SveMed, Pedro, Amed, Embase, SportDiscuss and Cinahl. Personal contacts with authors of articles were also taken. Four articles were included in the study. The articles were reviewed for methodological quality by a modified review template. Result: Two of the studies included resistance training of both knee joint- and hip joint muscles. All the included studies showed a significant decrease of the knee pain all though there was no significant increase of the hip muscle strength in one of the studies and no significant difference in the increase of the hip muscle strength between control- and intervention group in another study. The studies were found to be of moderate quality (2 pre-post intervention design) and of high quality (2 RCT-design). Conclusion: The result of the literature review implies that persons with medial knee pain could benefit from including resistance training of the hip muscles in the rehabilitation when the purpose is reducing pain. However, more studies are required to confirm this.