Specificity of the femoral slump test for the assessment of experimentally induced anterior knee pain.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the specificity of the femoral slump test (FST) when assessing experimentally induced anterior knee pain.


METHODS
Cross-sectional, exploratory study.


METHODS
Research laboratory.


METHODS
Asymptomatic subjects (N=12; 6 men; 6 women) for the study. An experimental pain model was used to simulate anterior knee pain by injecting .25 mL of hypertonic saline solution (5% NaCl) into the medial infrapatellar fat pad.


METHODS
Not applicable.


METHODS
The changes in pain intensity and diameter after applying the structure differential maneuver (neck flexion/extension) during the FST were recorded and analyzed.


RESULTS
Results revealed that the structure differential maneuver of the FST did not alter the pain intensity or diameter in 9 (neck extension) and 10 (neck flexion) out of 12 subjects, which meant that the FST provided appropriate testing responses in 75% to 83% cases when the anterior knee pain did not originate in neural tissues.


CONCLUSIONS
The FST had a specificity of more than .75 when detecting nerve mechanosensitivity problems of anterior knee pain.
Department of Physical Therapy and Assistive Technology, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Weng-Hang
WH
Lai
Yi-Fen
YF
Shih
Pei-Ling
PL
Lin
Wen-Yin
WY
Chen
Hsiao-Li
HL
Ma
D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007717:Knee; D008297:Male; D010146:Pain / Q000175:diagnosis*; D026741:Physical Therapy Modalities; D016059:Range of Motion, Articular / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results