United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Just wondering if any of you adults or older kids have developed problems with your knee joints on the affected side. Emily (age 16 robpi) has been having right knee pain for several months now, and we are finally getting the doctor to take it seriously, but I wonder if it could be related to her injury- like her gait may be somewhat off.
Any info. would be appreciated.
Sue

Sue,
We took Matthew to a chiropractor at 10 months of age. His right knee was out due to compensation issues. After a couple of adjustments he was ok.
Cindy

Hi Sue - (outside of the possibility of actual physical problems to the knee itself or cartilage, etc) there are two things to check...hips and shoes. Hips have a LOT to do with knees...and shoes can make a huge difference. Em might need a new pair of really good supportive sneakers.

But a chiro will take a look at hips and see if one's off... he might say that the right (or left) leg is "shorter" in his measurements but what that translates into is that the right side of the pelvis is tilted (left side down, right side up or opposite) due to tighteness in the musculature/tendons and with the correct stretching/technique it can be normalized in a short time.

If you're interested in coming down my way I can see Em and we can determine you if this is the issue and teach you what both of you can do to help with this. The technique that I use is called SoTai (Muscle Energy Therapy) - it retrains the muscles to hold the hip girdle in the correct position. The best way to describe it is "assisted isometric exercises." You do it 3 times and the hips stay in place for a very long time (year or years).

Anyway - email me if you are interested or want more info,
francine

francine@injurednewborn.com

Thanks, Cindy and Francine. Interesting, she does complain of some pain in her hip as well. Not as constant as the knee pain though. Also the ankles! Hmmmmm.
I will email you.
Sue

Hi Sue
Gavin (age 11 robpi) has complained of severe pain behind his knee for approximately 8 years now
The orthopaedic surgeon has examined it on numerous occasions and has pronounced it Fit and healthy, but it is always the same knee and the same place so i know he's not telling fibs!
I was very interested to read your post, thanks for sharing it with us
Karen

Karen - find a shiatsu school near you and find a practitioner that does So Tai. Or look up on the web for the AOBTA (this is the association) and see if they can find you UK practitioners.

Thanks Francine
I'll try and find one locally

I got a sore knee on the affected side, it had occasionally 'grumbled' over the years then it started swelling and became very painful, made much worse by a long haul flight of 30 hours. I found it hurt most when I did things like swimming (with a flail arm you have to do a kind of sidestroke and kick much harder with the leg on the affected side or you just go round in circles)
I got sent to an orthopaedist who said that somehow my compensation had caused one of the 4 muscles that hold the knee cap in place to waste away, so it was slipping. He prescribed physiotherapy 3 times a week (my employers at the time were not very happy about this! They couldn't understand how a 20 yr old arm injury could affect my knee...) and they taped my knee cap into place while I worked on the muscle. I worked quite hard to strengthen the wasted muscle and it took about 4 months to get it strong again. Since I came to New Zealand it hasn't flared up again, I think my very active lifestyle here has kept the muscle strong and stopped it happening again. But I am now getting a little pain in the hip of the unaffected side-this may be bpi compensatory damage to the joint or I may just be getting old, it's not enough of a problem for me to get it checked yet, I'm keeping an eye on it. Looking in a mirror I do definitely lean to the left away from the bpi side to help carry the weight of the arm as I have very little in the way of a shoulder. I can still run as fast as my 15 yr old daughter so I'm not too worried yet. I do have friends my age who haven't run in years and they report that if you stop doing stuff like that you can't do it when you want to.....so keep active or you'll get stiff....
Long term studies on peripheral nerve injuries have shown that the average time for compensatory injuries and joint damage to start making themselves felt is around 15 yrs post injury.
Hope this helps :0)

ps-severe bpi injuries often involve the spinal cord as well which can affect the leg on the affected side-babies with very bad bpi sometimes have a markedly smaller foot on the bpi side because of this.

And the leg may be a bit shorter as well. I would imagine that even a small difference could create imbalance issues.

Nancy