Background: Patellofemoral Pain (PFP) is a frequent musculoskeletal disorder that affects young active subjects and the public. A significant contributing component to the etiology of PFP is an alteration of the lower limb kinetic chain. Purpose: The study was conducted to determine if anterior pelvic tilt angle is correlated to pain intensity, functional impairment, and knee extensor muscle strength in patients with PFP. Methods: Forty patients were diagnosed with unilateral PFP (29 females and 11 males) with age between 18 and 35 years. Each patient was assessed for pain severity using the visual Analogue scale (VAS), functional disability using the Arabic version of the anterior knee pain scale (AKPS), knee extensor muscle strength with a hand-held dynamometer and pelvic tilting angle with Palpation Meter (PALM). Spearman's rank correlation coefficient test was conducted to evaluate the relationship between these clinical measures. Results: There was a statistically significant moderate positive correlation between anterior pelvic tilt angle and pain (r= 0.409; p= 0.009). However, there was no statistically significant relationship seen between the anterior pelvic tilt angle and knee extensor strength (r= -0.068; p= 0.677) and function (r= -0.088; p= 0.588).
Conclusions: Anterior pelvic tilt angle affects the pain intensity in patients with PFP while has no impact on knee function or strength of knee extensors. Anterior pelvic tilt angle may be one of the risk factors that makes PFP more common.