Case Studies

60yr.old man-surveyor - painful right knee

25-March-2010

This man presented 5 years ago with chronic back pain . This was treated and he got well veryquickly. He immediately attended yoga classes run by Andy Thomas and has had no trouble until 8 weeks ago when right knee pain stopped him bending. At the same time his golf suffered because of unilateral elbow pain.

The knee pain proved very interesting because he had 10degrees of restriction to flexion as well as contractured lateral hamstring. Kneeling produced what seemed to be cramp which manifested as diffuse pain not locatable in any one single area. This characterises pain often as not of joint origin. The joint capsule was shortened probably by pain inhibition but the primed mover seemed to be the hamstrings--one session of deep muscle work removed the contracture and stretching of the quads over a couple of weeks removed all the knee symptoms.

The elbow pain was due to C7 seizure which freed after 2 sessions and elbow symptoms disappeared.

Very tempting to consider the knee of a 60 year old man as arthritic--this was the label his GP applied without ev en touching it.