Proximal Tibiofibular Instability

In the never ending search to find a cause of ongoing knee problems I have drifted to the lower leg as this is where the pain seems to emanate from.

Has anyone heard of the above? Suffered from the above?

Hi Martin - saw your post this morning but as I can't even pronounce this condition, let alone give you any info about it, I thought I'd keep my gob shut. But as a fellow crocked knee runner, I just wanted to say hope you discover what's going wrong.

Martin,

I've just looked this up on the web (using Google) - it doesn't come up with a specific reference but there are a lot of foot/ankle type pieces of information. As I don't know precisely what you're looking for you might find it helpful to try a search? You've probably already done so, but just in case!

Good luck.

Never heard of 'instability' as a condition in this area, but correct movement in this joint is an essential part of the gait cycle. It's got one of the hamstring muscles attaching on to it and of course the other end of the fibula is the lateral part of the ankle joint, so no end of problems can start from there and work up. I'd think that problems in these areas are more likely than primary problems in the joint, assuming no traumatic injury.

Does the joint wiggle a lot when you move it backwards and forwards? Compare it to the other side and see if there's a noticable difference. It's quite a tough and (dare I say it) stable joint so normally needs quite a tug/shove.

aow, minkin and mungus, thanks for your interest and support.

I actually picked this idea up from reading around the subject of knee injuries on the web (and believe me as this injury has been hanging around for six months or more - I've read a lot). I have the idea because the source of the pain actually seems to be under the knee and in the upper portion of the leg - the sufferer I read about had the most pain when descending stairs (me) or when bending the leg under load (me also) - in addition, the symptoms seems more familiar than those for any of the other common leg complaints.

Mungus - the joint doesn't actually feel significantly looser than the other side - however one of the causes of this problem is impact from, for example, running down hills, unfortunately unavoidable where I live!

Sports injury clinic next Thursday will hopefully put me on the right track - although going by my historical experience it'll be "rest if for a couple a weeks and take two aspirin"