In our practice at London Sports Orthopaedics, we take your health very seriously, and we aim to provide the very highest possible level of care. When assessing how severe our patients’ symptoms and/or functional restrictions might be, and/or how well they might be progressing with their treatment or recovery, the norm is to rely mainly on subjective measures and our patients’ own perceptions and expressions of how they are feeling and what they can (or can’t) do.
We are delighted to now be able to offer a far higher and far more-detailed level of assessment at our clinic at 31 Old Broad Street.
These sessions are being run in the Research & Outcomes Centre, which is at the front of our clinic at 31 Old Broad Street, and they involve an approximately 1-hour session with Ms Amy Carruthers, who is an experienced Physiotherapist. The testing sessions are free for our patients, as this service is being funded by a grant kindly provided by The Sports Orthopaedics Research Foundation (www.sorf.org.uk).
These assessments are available specifically for patients of London Sports Orthopaedics who have knee issues, for pre- and post-op assessments for those patients undergoing surgery, and also for those patients being managed conservatively (i.e. without surgery), or who may potentially eventually end up needing surgery at some stage. The data will be shared with you and your consultant, and will give a very detailed picture of the impact of your knee issues on your function and your life, it will help highlight what specific deficits you might be suffering, and it will also help us to be able to monitor your progress with time. You will also be able to share your detailed data with your own physiotherapist, or any other clinician of your choosing. (Your functional data will be owned by you, and it will not be shared with any third party without your express permission.)
We will be able to liaise with you to co-ordinate any testing sessions so that they match up with whatever follow-up appointments you might have booked at our clinic with your consultant.
In addition to the above, our practice is also signed up to a research project in association with University College London, funded by a company called VALD (who make the force plates that we use for functional testing), where patient’s functional data will be entered into a prospective study. Amy will be able to give you more information about this study, if you are interested, but participating in that study is entirely voluntary, and is not a prerequisite for you still being able to have a detailed functional assessment at our clinic.
These assessments are entirely voluntary, and are not a mandatory part of your overall care or treatment at our clinic; however, the results of the testing are a very useful tool to help guide rehabilitation by addressing any of the deficits identified on testing and monitoring their effect on your pain and quality of life, and we anticipate that the data will help greatly in assisting with your overall care and in allowing us to provide the very best possible service to you for your knee issues.
What the testing sessions involve:
The Functional Assessment Testing sessions are held in the Research & Outcomes Centre at our clinic at 31 Old Broad Street, in The City (EC2N 1HT), and take approximately 1 hour.
Amy, our Research Physio, will give you a questionnaire for you to complete for your subjective ‘PROMs’ scores (Patient-Reported Outcome Measures). She will also talk you through the physical tests and you will only need to perform those tests that you feel happy and confident to undertake safely (this session should end up being ‘fun’ for you, not onerous, stressful or painful!).
The physical testing will involve Amy measuring how well you can achieve the following:
- squatting
- single-leg balancing
- jumps
- hops and
- the strength of your hip and knee movements
A ForceFrame is used to measure the strength of your leg muscles by pushing into a fixed sensor. Force Decks measure force as you push into the floor during tasks such as jumping and squatting. Your results will be provided to you and shared with your consultant and your physio.
A ForceFrame is used to measure the strength of your leg muscles by pushing into a fixed sensor. Force Decks measure force as you push into the floor during tasks such as jumping and squatting. Your results will be provided to you and shared with your consultant and your physio.
The Functional Assessment Testing sessions are held in the Research & Outcomes Centre at our clinic at 31 Old Broad Street, in The City (EC2N 1HT), and take approximately 1 hour.
Amy, our Research Physio, will give you a questionnaire for you to complete for your subjective ‘PROMs’ scores (Patient-Reported Outcome Measures). She will also talk you through the physical tests and you will only need to perform those tests that you feel happy and confident to undertake safely (this session should end up being ‘fun’ for you, not onerous, stressful or painful!).
The physical testing will involve Amy measuring how well you can achieve the following:
- squatting
- single-leg balancing
- jumps
- hops and
- the strength of your hip and knee movements
For further information: Contact Amy Carruthers, Research Physio
This course is supported by
The Sports Orthopaedics Research Foundation