Patellar Dislocation
Leave Your Patella Where It's At!

What Is A Patellar Disclocation?

This page from University of Connecticut Health Center is one of the bettter descriptions that I've seen on websites on the web.

The patella, your knee cap, is held in place with tendon and ligament. It is supposed to track through its grove when the knee bends and straightens.

A Patellar Subluxation means that the kneecap is tracking off the groove.

A Patellar Dislocation means that for a variety of reasons, the patella is pulled off to the left or the right (usually to the outside of the leg direction).

This Can Be Bad! It is not supposed to leave it's track by much. The farther it goes, the more connective tissue gets damaged, tendon tissue and/or ligament tissue.

Patella dislocation won't be much of a mystery to you. It is a traumatic, often fast event. The kneecap will usually slide back into place.

The question is, how far out did it go, and how much damage did you get?

Dealing with Patellar Dislocation Damage

Dislocation of the patella can be painful and cause A LOT of swelling.

Ice Packs. As big and as heavy and as cold as possible. 5 minutes on, 5 off, as many times as you can for the first 48ish hours. Keep that Inflammation down.

That's the immediate thing.

Maybe you'll need to see a doctor. Maybe you'll need some kind of surgery.

If the dislocation is bad enough, you can get bits of cartiledge and connectve tissue ripped off and floating in the space between the patella and the knee joint. You will not like this!

If there is major tear of ligament and such, surgery may be a good idea.

If it's a relatively minor dislocation, it will hurt for a while, maybe swell, and then it will or won't stop hurting after a time.

With surgery or without, time passes, and that's where I come in.

Watch out for Patellar Tendonitis!

Patellar Dislocation and Tendonitis

So let's just assume that your legs were just fine and then you got active somehow and got a dislocated kneecap.

Actually, let's NOT assume that because it doesn't jhappen that way.

You're only going to get a dislocated patella if you already have a patella tracking disorder. (Ok, that's a REALLY fancy medical name for a muscle imbalance of the quads.) The kind of muscle imbalance that makes up Patellar Femoral Syndrome.

Kneecap dislocations happen more in males, and young athletic males (not enough stretching and proper strengthening!). They can happen to anybody, because anybody can have muscles in the quads improperly balanced.

Bart says it best and shows you how to fix this in his ebook Patella Femoral Solutions

So. Muscle imbalance leads to injury. Injury accellerates the Pain Causing Dynamic and increases tightness, connective tissue constriction, and pain.

Your body will do it's best to get you back to a pain free state, but it's only so good at that, and evein if your pain goes away, you will be left with muscle imbalance, a Pain Causing Dynamic, and other remnants of healing an injury.

Injuries don't heal back to 100%. There are too many factors at play.

But you can keep things from getting bad. You can reverse the dynamic. You can help things heal.

One of the keys to staying pain free is to effectively counter the Process of Inflammation.

Keep the nervous system from sensing pain, and it won't tighten muscles up, and connective tissue won't shrink down and constrict.

The Tendonitis dynamic is slow and insideous. It sneaks up on you.

You'll 'heal' from your Patellar Dislocation, feel fine or close to it, and then at some point in the future pain will come creeping back in.

When you were feeling fine, the dynamic slowly progressed.

Be aware! The pain and injury of Patellar Dislocation can lead to Patellar Tendonitis later.

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