methods used for the assessment of knee joint arthrokinematics: a review of literature

Background: studying joint arthrokinematic motion parameters can be valuable to health professionals in terms of diagnosis of illnesses and injuries of the joint, assessment of treatment results, and identifying the type and degree of injury. objectives: an exhaustive review of the methods for the assessment of knee joint arthrokinematics is provided. methods: some known databases, including sciencedirect, pubmed, embase, cinahl, and google scholar were explored for articles published from 1985 to february 2020. results: after the assessment steps, 14 articles were chosen based on the criteria and objectives of the research; 13 articles in entirety and one as a summary. through a review of the studies, it was observed that various methods were used for the assessment and measurement of knee joint arthrokinematic movements. in the beginning, the focus was on transitional motion, in which knee arthrokinematic movements were studied in the static state; but over time, knee transitional movement was studied in a dynamic state as well. more recent studies scrutinized three main types of arthrokinematics: motion rolling, gliding, and spinning. there were also studies that tried to implement tools, which required minimum cost and scrutinized the knee arthrokinematic movements without complicated state-of-the-art equipment. all the used equipment was designed aiming to diagnose how the arthrokinematic movements of an injured knee compared to a healthy one. conclusion: results of our analysis showed that the literature is rich with a variety of instruments for measuring knee arthrokinematic movements. by classifying the instruments, it was found that studies of four different measurement methods, including static, dynamic, functional, and qualitative examined the arthrokinematic movements of the knee.