Gymna-2019-2020 - Flipbook - Side 76
Shockwave therapy
Patellar tendonitis (PT),
a clinical challenge.
Did you know that shockwave therapy really
works?
Seppe has suffered from PT for months. Different
therapies, including eccentric training and PRP (plateletrich plasma) therapy, weren’t working. Finally, they
opted to try Radial Shockwave Therapy. And it worked!
The pain disappeared, he could focus on his training
again, and as a result, won a place at the 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sotchi.
Seppe Smits,
snowboarding world
champion (2011), can
tell you all about it.
PATELLAR TENDONITIS (PT)
Patellar tendonitis is a frequently
occurring injury among athletes who
have to jump a lot, like basketball and
volleyball players. This injury occurs
among 30-45% of athletes in top-class
sports. It occurs among 10-15%1 at
recreational level.
PT is a stress injury. An imbalance occurs
between the load and the capacity of
the knee extensors to bear this load. In
Seppe’s case, the major impact was on
the patellar tendon upon landing after
each jump, which was the primary cause
of the PT. The following factors can also
influence the cause of this injury: weight,
BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, difference in leg
length, height of the foot’s arch, of the
hamstrings and quadriceps, power in the
quadriceps and the vertical jump force2.
The patellar tendon has a stiff structure,
must bear heavy loads, and is connected
to the largest muscle group and longest
bones in the human body. Moreover, the
patellar tendon has little blood flowing
through it. This makes a PT injury difficult
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to treat. Most rehabilitation programmes
are based on reducing the weight on
the knee and improving the muscle-tendon function by means of eccentric
training. To date, it is a good treatment,
but scientific research has not always
been able to demonstrate the success.
Sometimes, the impact on the tendon
is simply too much, like in Seppe’s case.
Luckily, time does not stand still and
innovations in physical therapy have
provided a solution. For example, for
the past 15 years, shockwave therapy
has been used successfully for chronic
tendonitis therapy. The good results
obtained with shockwave therapy make
it a widely accepted and widely used
therapy for, among other things, tennis
elbow, plantar fasciopathy and patellar
tendonitis. The mechanotransduction
stimuli during shockwave therapy
treatments cause neovascularisation,
migration and differentiation in the
mesenchymal stem cells, which boosts
the natural healing process. Various
recently published scientific studies on
the treatment of PT using shockwave
therapy have demonstrated positive
