A new Cochrane review published in January 2015 has found consistent evidence that exercise therapy for PFPS may result in clinically important reduction in pain and improvement in functional ability, as well as enhancing long-term recovery.
Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) is characterised by retropatellar or peripatellar pain, is often referred to as anterior knee pain. The pain mostly occurs when load is put on the knee extensor mechanism when climbing stairs, squatting, running, cycling or sitting with flexed knees. Exercise therapy is often prescribed for this condition.
31 heterogeneous trials including 1690 participants with patellofemoral pain were included in this review. There was considerable between-study variation in patient characteristics (e.g. activity level) and diagnostic criteria for study inclusion (e.g. minimum duration of symptoms) and exercise therapy. Although the review supports exercise therapy for PFPS the authors conclude that there is insufficient evidence to determine the best form of exercise therapy and it is unknown whether this result would apply to all people with PFPS. There is some very low quality evidence that hip plus knee exercises may be more effective in reducing pain than knee exercise alone.Further randomised trials are warranted but in order to optimise research effort and engender the large multicentre randomised trials that are required to inform practice, these should be preceded by research that aims to identify priority questions and attain agreement and, where practical, standardisation regarding diagnostic criteria and measurement of outcome.