Clinical Management of Patellar Tendinopathy in Athletes: A Narrative Review of Diagnosis, Treatment, and Return to Sport

Description

Yuhao Chen, Xin Kuang, and Xinyan Zheng review the care of jumper's knee in athletes in a 2026 paper. Patellar tendinopathy, pain where the kneecap tendon meets bone, hits about eighteen percent of athletes and nearly half of volleyball players. Diagnosis still rests on history and examination; scans often show changes in painless knees too, inviting overdiagnosis. No settled guideline exists, so the team synthesized the evidence.

Exercise therapy is the best-studied option and a reasonable first line, though no loading style clearly wins and the evidence is weak. Injections vary and are usually tangled with exercise in studies, hiding their solo effect. Shockwave therapy lacks support as a main treatment. The authors advise judging progress by function, not by scan pictures, when timing an athlete's return.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13664801