- SlidesCaseload 7Knee OsteoarthritisThe one pattern where Australia has a current national standard — and where the biggest thing you can do for a patient is not order the X-ray. Diagnose it clinically, load it properly, and change the words.
- SlidesAcute ACL InjuryThe numbers you were taught for Lachman, drawer and pivot shift come from knees under anaesthetic. Here is what they do on a guarded, swollen, awake knee — and why half of one trial's rehab arm never needed surgery.
- SlidesHamstring StrainSudden posterior thigh pain during sprinting or an overstretch, sharp enough to stop the activity, with local tenderness and pain on resisted knee flexion and passive stretch. It has a real JOSPT guideline and a Journal of Physiotherapy appraisal behind it — and the honest headline is that a decade of Nordic hamstring exercise has not brought injury rates down.
- SlidesIliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS)Sharp lateral knee pain two to three centimetres above the joint line, coming on during or after running or cycling, worse downhill and with volume spikes, with no locking or instability. The compression-not-friction pearl is correct and sourced — and the test usually taught with it has been shown anatomically not to test what its name implies.
- SlidesMedial Collateral Ligament (MCL) InjuryMedial knee pain after a valgus load, with tenderness along the MCL and a positive valgus stress test at 30°. Isolated, it is one of the best-prognosis injuries in the knee. The entire clinical job is establishing that it actually is isolated — because MCL injury alongside ACL injury has been reported as common.
- SlidesMeniscus TearThe pattern where the right answer is usually exercise, the tests you were taught are close to a coin flip, and the word 'locking' is doing two completely different jobs.
- SlidesOsgood-Schlatter Disease (Tibial Tuberosity Apophysitis)Gradual, focal anterior knee pain at the tibial tuberosity in an active 10-to-15-year-old, worse with jumping, running, squatting and kneeling, with a tender lump you can put one finger on. The diagnosis is easy. The part that gets done badly is the prognosis conversation and the reload plan.
- SlidesPatellar Dislocation / Patellofemoral InstabilityThe knee that 'went out' on a twisting movement in a teenager, kneecap displaced laterally. What decides between rehab and referral, and what the first six weeks should look like.
- SlidesPatellar Tendinopathy (Jumper's Knee)Localised inferior patellar pole pain that comes on with jumping, landing and deceleration, warms up during activity and bites afterwards. It is the one CliniStudy page with a real guideline, a J Physiother appraisal and a Cochrane review behind it — and the common isometrics-for-analgesia teaching is the part that needs correcting.
- SlidesPatellofemoral Pain (PFP)The pattern you make on two history questions and confirm by ruling out what it isn't. Structure explains nothing, hip weakness is a consequence rather than a cause, quads and hip programs are equivalent and neither reached the MCIC — and it is not an eight-week condition.
- SlidesPosterior Cruciate Ligament (PCL) InjuryA fall onto a flexed knee or a dashboard injury, then posterior knee ache and instability going down stairs or decelerating — usually with far less swelling than an ACL, which is exactly why it gets missed. Quadriceps is the functional PCL, hamstring loading early is the thing to avoid, and the posterolateral corner is the screen that decides whether the plan works.
- SlidesQuadriceps Muscle Strain (and Contusion)Sudden anterior thigh pain during sprinting or kicking, with local tenderness, pain on resisted knee extension and pain on stretch into flexion. Two things often lumped together need separating: a strain and a contusion are different injuries with different complications — and within strains, the rectus femoris is the one that behaves badly enough to have its own rehabilitation pathway.
- SlidesSeptic Arthritis / DVT / Tumour — the hot, swollen, or unexplained limbThree emergencies wearing the same clothes as a knee or calf problem. The pattern is a limb that is too hot, too swollen, too painful for what happened to it, or too persistent at night. You are not diagnosing any of the three. You are noticing that this does not behave like load-sensitive musculoskeletal pain, and getting it assessed today.
- SlidesSinding-Larsen-Johansson Syndrome (Inferior Pole Apophysitis)Gradual anterior knee pain at the inferior pole of the patella in a jumping, sprinting or kicking adolescent through a growth spurt. It behaves like Osgood-Schlatter one structure further up, and it is managed the same way — but the reason it earns its own page is patellar sleeve fracture, which presents at the same site in the same knee and cannot be missed.
This is a learning tool. It does not diagnose patients and does not replace your clinical educator.
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