Shockwave therapy for knee tendon pain

Knee pain that belongs to a tendon and knee pain that belongs to the joint surface are not interchangeable targets. Shockwave therapy is built, in this conversation, for the first problem. It is not a stand-in for the second. The tendon people usually mean is the patellar tendon, the spring under the kneecap that stores and releases energy when you jump, land, or climb. Arthritis inside the hinge, a torn meniscus, and a kneecap that does not track are neighbors on a pain map and strangers in a treatment plan. The decision this page is for is whether your pain is even the kind of tissue an acoustic wave is aimed at.

A spring under the cap, not the hinge itself

The patellar tendon runs from the bottom of the kneecap to the bump on the front of the shin. It is part of the chain that straightens the knee. Patellar tendinopathy, sometimes called jumper's knee, declares itself at that inferior pole. Jumping and stairs are the classic provocateurs. Many people also describe pain that is worse after they have been sitting and then start moving, a pattern this page lists because patients recognize it, while warning that the same "stiff after sitting" sentence shows up in other knee problems too. The tendon version is usually a fingertip of tenderness on the cord itself. You can often point. You can often make it talk by loading the spring: a decline, a hop, a single-leg squat done slowly.

MedlinePlus on knee injuries and disorders (opens in a new tab) is deliberately plural. Ligament tears, bursitis, tracking problems, arthritis, and tendon pain share a zip code. Tendinitis (opens in a new tab) adds the general idea: a tendon asked to do more tensile work than it currently tolerates, often sliding from a short-lived irritation into a chronic, degenerative picture if the overload continues. The patellar tendon is a frequent member of that club in people who jump, and also in people who never jump but climb stairs, lunge in the gym, or work on their knees and then stand up fast.

Pattern	More consistent with patellar tendinopathy	More consistent with a problem inside the joint
Where a finger lands	On the tendon at the bottom of the kneecap	Deep in the joint, often along the joint line, hard to pinpoint on a cord
What provokes it	Jumping, landing, stairs, a loaded squat	Swelling, prolonged weight bearing, sometimes grinding or giving way
After sitting	Stiffness that eases or spikes as you start to move, tendon still locally tender	The whole knee feels aged or swollen, not a single spring
What shockwave would be aimed at	The tendon fibers the exam marks	Not the cartilage surface, not a meniscus tear as a target
What the plan still needs	Progressive tensile loading of that tendon	A joint diagnosis, which might be non-surgical and might not be acoustic

The non-surgical joint side of this map, without turning shockwave into an arthritis promise, is discussed on /knee-pain-without-surgery. Read that when the pain is the hinge. Stay here when the pain is the spring.

Which wave, and what it is not allowed to claim

If the exam confirms a tendon target, the next choice is field shape. A focused shockwave parks a peak at a depth, which can suit the small insertion at the inferior pole. A radial pressure wave spreads a shallower, wider field, which can suit a longer irritable segment of the tendon body. The physics of that choice is on /radial-vs-focused-shockwave. Both Storz devices are on the technology inventory, and the practice describes the service on its shockwave page. Owning both means the applicator can follow the tendon that was found. It does not mean every painful knee receives a series, and it does not mean both applicators are used because both were purchased.

Heel trials are the wrong scoreboard. Gerdesmeyer 2008 (opens in a new tab) and Gollwitzer 2015 (opens in a new tab) measured chronic plantar fasciitis. They did not measure patellar tendons, and this page will not reprint their success figures as if a kneecap had been in the study. No knee cure rate is offered in their place. Acoustic treatment is a candidate stimulus for a chronic tendon. It is not a method, in this office's published materials, for restoring articular cartilage. Anyone who sells shockwave as knee replacement prevention with a percentage attached is not quoting a result this guide can stand behind.

The spring still has to be loaded

A patellar tendon adapts to tensile load or it does not adapt. Complete rest calms a flare and also detrains the spring. A sudden return to jumping reloads the same fibers that failed. Progressive loading is the graded path between those errors: isometrics that the next morning tolerates, then heavier slow resistance, then energy-storage work such as hopping only when the tendon has earned it. Decline-board squats are one method the wider literature discusses for this tendon. They are not printed here as this office's mandatory protocol, and they are a bad idea on a knee that is swollen, unstable, or not actually a tendon problem. The principle to keep is simpler than any single exercise brand. Capacity is rebuilt on purpose, in steps, with the provoking sport or job edited rather than either worshipped or abandoned.

Landing mechanics, hip strength, and ankle stiffness change how much force the patellar tendon sees. A chiropractic exam that stops at the sore centimeter under the cap is an incomplete look at a jumper or a stair-climber. Dr. Choi's background is kinesiology and Diversified adjusting, which fits a knee that is part of a moving person. He is a chiropractor, and so is Dr. Richter. The page does not give either of them a narrower title. Dr. Richter's role on this visit may be the same exam and the decision about whether a machine belongs. The machine list is not a personality.

Knee on Trac is on the inventory, and that is all this page will say

The practice reports a Knee on Trac unit in the office, described in the equipment list as knee decompression. Patients ask whether that table, rather than a shockwave cap, is the thing that will "fix the knee." The honest status is a blank. How the doctors use it, on whom, and with what expectations has not been written in their words. The page carries an open item for that description on purpose. Until it is filled, this guide will not invent pressures, angles, or outcomes. Knee on Trac is not a cure in this text. It is not a substitute for telling tendon pain from joint pain. It is not automatically combined with shockwave. If a future signed description says otherwise, the page can change. It will not change by guesswork.

Other modalities get the same fence. Class IV laser, covered on /class-iv-laser-therapy, is light with a federal hazard class, not a quieter shockwave. EMTT, covered on /emtt-therapy, is a contact-free magnetic field. The low-back trial attached to EMTT is not a knee-tendon trial. Mentioning the devices is a map of the building. It is not a stack of promises.

Patterns that should not be booked as a tendon series

Get urgent or emergency care, rather than a course of visits, when the knee cannot take weight after an injury, when it locks and will not fully straighten after a twist, or when it is hot and swollen in the company of fever. Those patterns look for fracture, a mechanical block, infection, or a significant ligament injury. New calf swelling and pain, especially after travel or illness, is a clot question, and a clotting history is already incompatible with the practice's published shockwave screen. Unexplained weight loss with a cancer history, or night pain that is not tied to jumping and is escalating, needs medical evaluation before a tendon story is allowed to win.

Shockwave itself, when the tendon story does hold, still respects the published limits: pregnancy is a reason not to treat, and so is infection or tumor in the field, and so is a blood-clotting disorder. The manual has to be checked against that public list. Skin over the tendon should be intact. A pacemaker question is an EMTT screen, not something an acoustic knee visit answers casually.

There is no session price in this article. The practice has not published one for patellar-tendon shockwave, and this page's open items do not include a fee schedule. What you can do before the visit is separate the spring from the hinge in your own words. Point to the spot. Name the jump, the stair, or the sit-to-stand that lights it up. Say whether the knee swells, locks, or gives out. Bring old images. The applicator, if it is used, is aimed at a tendon the exam has already named. A joint that needs a different plan should leave with that plan, or with a referral, not with a series aimed at the wrong layer of the knee.