KNEE-JOINT EFFUSION AND PROPRIOCEPTION

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of excessive flui d in the knee joint on proprioception, Twenty healthy subjects with no knee pathology participated in this study, Subjects were randomly ass igned to control and experimental groups, Baseline measurements of sub jects performing a tracking task were then recorded, Specifically, one knee joint was moved passively by a dynamometer through a range of mo tion from approximately 90 degrees flexion to 10 degrees from full ext ension at a joint angular velocity of 60 degrees/sec, Subjects were bl indfolded and required to track the passively moving joint as accurate ly as possible for a period of 1.25 minutes with the opposite limb, An electrogoniometer was used to monitor the motion of the active tracki ng limb, Ninety mL of a solution of saline and dextrose were injected into the knee joint cavity of the experimental subjects, and they repe ated the tracking task, After a 5-minute rest, the control group subje cts also repeated the task, The results indicated that the injection o f fluid did not change the subjects' error in tracking the passively m oving Limb (p > 0.05), No change in the error associated with tracking was observed for the control group (p > 0.05). It is suggested that t he effects of long-term effusions and the nature of the inflammatory f luid might be more responsible for the loss of proprioception observed in some clinical conditions.