Knee Joint Biomechanics in Physiological Conditions and How Pathologies Can Affect It: A Systematic Review.

Li Zhang,Geng Liu,Yuzhou Yan,Jianbing Ma,Bing Han,Zhe Wang,Pingping Wei

doi:10.1155/2020/7451683

Li Zhang, Geng Liu + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/7451683

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Abstract

The knee joint, as the main lower limb motor joint, is the most vulnerable and susceptible joint. The knee injuries considerably impact the normal living ability and mental health of patients. Understanding the biomechanics of a normal and diseased knee joint is in urgent need for designing knee assistive devices and optimizing a rehabilitation exercise program. In this paper, we systematically searched electronic databases (from 2000 to November 2019) including ScienceDirect, Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, and IEEE/IET Electronic Library for potentially relevant articles. After duplicates were removed and inclusion criteria applied to the titles, abstracts, and full text, 138 articles remained for review. The selected articles were divided into two groups to be analyzed. Firstly, the real movement of a normal knee joint and the normal knee biomechanics of four kinds of daily motions in the sagittal and coronal planes, which include normal walking, running, stair climbing, and sit-to-stand, were discussed and analyzed. Secondly, an overview of the current knowledge on the movement biomechanical effects of common knee musculoskeletal disorders and knee neurological disorders were provided. Finally, a discussion of the existing problems in the current studies and some recommendation for future research were presented. In general, this review reveals that there is no clear assessment about the biomechanics of normal and diseased knee joints at the current state of the art. The biomechanics properties could be significantly affected by knee musculoskeletal or neurological disorders. Deeper understanding of the biomechanics of the normal and diseased knee joint will still be an urgent need in the future.

Highlights

Since the number of the old and obese worldwide has been increasing yearly, the research on human motion dysfunction is getting more and more attention
A number of researches related with the biomechanics of normal and diseased knee joint have been done during the last decades
In the aspect of normal knee biomechanics, there is no clear assessment at the current stateof-the-art

Summary

Introduction

Since the number of the old and obese worldwide has been increasing yearly, the research on human motion dysfunction is getting more and more attention. The knee joint, as the main lower limb motor joint, is the most vulnerable and susceptible joint [1]. Knee impairments are the common physical problems which impact the normal living ability and mental health of these patients [2]. The influences mainly contain the supporting body weight, the assisting lower limb swing, and the absorbing strike shock [3]. The movement biomechanics, as an important branch of biomechanics, studies the coordination of the bones, muscles, ligament, and tendons in various human movements [4]. The complex interaction of these structures allows the knee to withstand tremendous forces during various normal movements [1]. It is an urgent need to study the movement biomechanics of the normal and diseased knee joint for the assistance or rehabilitation of human locomotor function

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