Patella Baja: The Most Common Knee Condition Nobody Knows About

by Mike McClellan

Constant pain in the front and center of your knee. The inability to bend your knee into a crouched position. Not enough leg strength to stand up from a crouched position. Does this sound familiar? If so, there’s a chance you may have Patella Baja.

Patella Baja

Patella Baja is a condition where the knee cap is positioned too low. It can make bending your leg past 90 degrees difficult to impossible. As if this lack of mobility isn’t bad enough, it will also usually lead to weak leg muscles. More specifically, weak quadriceps muscles.

Quadriceps Weakness

With your knee cap sitting so low, the tendon above your knee is constantly being stretched more than it should, just to reach your knee cap. When you bend your leg farther and farther, it continues to stretch that tendon even more, and eventually it just refuses to stretch any more, usually around 90 degrees.  If your leg can’t bend past 90 degrees, then any leg exercise you might do is only going to be strengthening over a limited range of motion. This may allow you to fairly comfortably sit up from a high seated-chair, but crouching down to pick something up isn’t an activity you would attempt in your wildest dreams.

Total Knee Arthroplasty (Knee Replacement) Patients

People who have had previous knee injuries, from bone fractures to tendon/ligament tears, are at an increased risk of developing Patella Baja. You may think you’re out-of-the-woods if you’ve had a TKA (Total Knee Arthroplasty), but that’s far from the truth. Surprisingly enough, people who have had a total knee replacement have a higher increased risk of developing Patella Baja. Studies have found that the prevalence of the condition occurs in anywhere from 25-34% of TKA patients. This typically starts a month after surgery, and progressively worsens for up to four (4) years post-surgery.

Patella Fracture Articles

ORIF Knee Recovery on X10 (with Professor Jik Chin)People talk about self-driving cars. That's all part of robotics and is incredibly interesting. It’s important work that Elon Musk and others are doing in that area. This knee robot, unlike self-driving cars, which is really technology for the future, it's already there.November 12, 2019The $300,000 Knee (Lois and the knee replacement nightmare)Lois' left knee has added up to more than $300,000, at least. And this knee has occupied more than 10 months of her life so far. Listen to Lois' story here.October 16, 2019Tibial Plateau Fracture Recovery (Gina’s X10 Intervention)We share an interview with Gina who had a tibial plateau fracture recovery with the X10. She started on the X10 ten weeks after the surgery when she was very disappointed with her recovery. Within two weeks she solved her knee surgery recovery problem.July 22, 2019

What often happens is after an individual has a TKA, they go through at home and clinical physical therapy. Once that is complete, after typically 4-8 weeks, they return to a mostly sedentary lifestyle. The longer they are inactive, the weaker their quadriceps muscles become. And the farther their knee cap will continue to drop. After a while the knee cap drops so far that the quadriceps t...