Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms patients seek for chiropractors and other specialists. Many people completely ignore the appearance of unpleasant sensations, considering them age-related and almost natural. But knee pain has many prerequisites because it has a complex structure and is affected by a number of harmful factors from outside and inside the body. Some illnesses are serious and require urgent treatment.
Who is more likely to have a knee injury?
The knee is made up of several bones connected by muscles, ligaments, tendons. There are also 5 synovial sacs - cavities surrounded by membranes designed to protect joints. Between the joints is connective cartilage - the cartilage that allows the knee to move freely. Violation of the work of even one part of the knee joint leads to the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Especially knee pain often occurs in people with flat feet. This is a pathology of the feet, which violates the ability of the extremities to absorb shock. With age, the increased load on the joints causes their destruction and the development of inflammation - a pain syndrome appears. Similar consequences have different types of deformities of the feet and legs.
There are several factors that make knee pain more frequent:
- overweight;
- Passive lifestyle;
- High sports loads;
- Diabetes;
- Vascular diseases;
- Elderly;
- Operation and injury of the knee;
- Work with increased loads on the legs.
The causes and treatment of knee pain vary widely, as does the severity of the sensation. If the knee joint is painful, the cause may be an injury or a severe stage of osteoarthritis, a severe inflammatory process. Sometimes this symptom becomes permanent, even at rest, accompanied by swelling, redness, and crunching. All these signs will alert a person and force them to see a doctor.
Pain from a bruise in the knee
Among the traumatic causes of joint dysfunction, bruises are the most common. Why does the knee hurt if the previous symptoms were just a small bruise? Even a minor injury is accompanied by bleeding into their peristaltic, swollen soft tissues. As a result, nerve roots are damaged, pain occurs.
In more severe cases, knee pain increases when flexing and extending the leg, the person stops moving due to a burning sensation in the joint. When palpating, the legs can be swollen and warm to the touch. How to treat such an injury? You should contact a traumatologist, get an x-ray, follow all the recommendations and make sure your foot is safe.
Often, metastatic disease after trauma becomes the cause of knee pain after a trivial bruise. This is a condition in which blood overflows into the joint cavity, causing edema and swelling of the synovial membrane. As a result, the joint fills with blood and inflammation begins in it. Without proper treatment, trauma can lead to the development of chronic joint disease, even at a young age.
Other types of knee injuries
If the leg at the knee is painful and an injury is contributing to these sensations, the cause may lie in the various components of the damaged joint. Here are the main ones:
- Meningitis disease. It is a condition in which the meniscus is flattened or torn. Especially often injuries are observed in professional athletes, in those engaged in extreme sports, as well as in domestic injuries. A person feels the knee is seriously ill, the nature of sensations is like a stab, a dagger, the joint loses mobility for a while.
- Ligament damage. Occurrence (sprain) ligament occurs when the leg is twisted, after jumping, the limb is stretched in an unnatural position. Sharp pain, swollen legs, change in joint position, looseness.
- Anterior cruciate ligament rupture. Because these ligaments are located inside the joint, an injury often results in blood leaking out into the knee cavity. Only a puncture will help pump blood out and make an accurate diagnosis.
Pain in the knee joint is sometimes accompanied by chronic kneecap dislocation. Without treatment of acute trauma in some patients, dislocations become chronic and frequently recur. In children, this pathology causes an X-shaped curvature of the leg and leads to a serious violation of its function. Sometimes the pathology affects the knees above the legs.
Inflammatory diseases of the knee
Often standard treatments for knee pain don't work. In this case, not the joint itself but the surrounding soft tissues may be affected. So tendinitis, or tendinitis, can be triggered by increased stress on the extremities, past foot injuries, allergies, drug reactions, and more. v. Painful knee joints with such a disease, as a rule, during the day or evening, at night the pain subsides. In the acute phase, joint mobility is severely limited, the syndrome is persistent, which cannot be treated with ointments, creams. Sharp sensation is also observed when palpating the lateral part of the knee.
If knee pain is frequent, symptoms worsen after hypothermia, the cause may be bursitis - inflammation of the synovial membrane. Inflammatory secretions appear inside the joint, causing pain and flare-ups. The causes of the pathology are diverse:
- autoimmune diseases;
- Metabolic diseases;
- Past injuries;
- Arthritis.
Another "common" disease that causes knee pain is bursitis. It occurs when the joint capsule (capsule) becomes inflamed. In addition to the pain syndrome, there is also redness, swelling, and increased sensitivity in the patella. If you do not promptly clarify how to treat bursitis, the disease will most likely become chronic.
Knee joint tumor
These localized malignancies are rare, and the pain syndrome is typical for them only at a very late stage. Usually, pain in the knee joint is inherent in benign forms:
- Baker's cyst. This tumor appears below the knee, on its dorsal surface. In appearance, the skin above the cyst is normal, not inflamed; in a bent form, there may be no swelling. In a standing position, a well-defined, soft, elastic formation appears at the site of localization of the cyst. It occurs after a unilateral knee injury, damaged cartilage. Very often, cysts are accompanied by chronic synovitis, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis. Large cysts not only cause knee pain, but also severely limit the mobility of the limbs. Due to pinched blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms are cold, pale skin, goosebumps, and numbness.
- The meniscus. Appears in external or internal meniscus, when a cavity with fluid is localized within the cartilage. In this case, the knee hurts after a high load or at the end of the day. Large cysts are visible on the side of the joint, while smaller cysts can only be seen on ultrasound or x-ray.
A rare pathology is Hoff's disease - the change of fatty tissue of the joint, becoming fibrous and causing dysfunction of the joint. Against the background of this pathology, joint disease often develops, which causes pain in the knee joint. Causes - hormonal disorders, menopause in women.
Infectious diseases of the joints
In the context of infection, the knee joint is very painful, strong, and does not improve with rest. Even urogenital and intestinal infections can cause complications to the musculoskeletal system, leading to reactive arthritis. Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) enter the joint cavity of the bone by the bloodstream, deposit on tissues and cause inflammation. Tendons are often also inflamed, so when touching the knee, it will be swollen and hot.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease. Mycobacterium tuberculosis proliferates in bone tissue, causing bone loss and necrosis of cartilage and soft tissues. If not treated in time, the knee joint will be damaged and collapsed, this process increasingly covers a large area. As a result, fistulas appear - purulent cavities, which can drain and cause damage to the entire organism.
An acute, urgent disease is osteomyelitis. What to do if your knee hurts, and the process is accompanied by weakness, muscle pain, fever up to 40 degrees? If the pain in the knee does not stop, flares up and the tissues themselves are swollen, red, and blue, you should urgently call an ambulance and go to the emergency room. Otherwise, you could lose a leg or die.
Knee pain - the cause of degenerative nature
After the age of 50, a lot of people suffer from knee pain. A prerequisite is that the body ages, the articular apparatus wears out, and the most common pathology arises - osteoarthritis (gonarthrosis). It leads to thinning, destruction of cartilage accompanied by a change in the shape of the ends of the bones. Usually, in the early stages of the disease, the knee joint hurts on one side, after a few years the damage becomes bilateral. In the morning, the numbness of the legs is worrisome, but it will pass quickly. Can enhance feeling after physical work, intense sports, long walking.
In the advanced stage, joint tissue collapses, bone cells grow to the sides of the joint cavity. These are spikes made of bone tissue that, in severe cases, break off and cause unbearable pain. There are several degenerative diseases whose symptoms will be similar to those of gonarthrosis:
- Bone disease. It affects the articular surface of the bones, is associated with injuries, playing sports. Teenagers can grow for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis. It occurs in rheumatism, psoriasis, gout, causes chronic inflammation and destroys joints.
- Chondromatosis. The cause is not clear. The disease causes knots on the synovial membrane that limit movement of the knee joint and cause pain.
Women going through menopause often have knee pain due to osteoporosis - bones thin, increasing brittleness. The disease is accompanied by leg cramps, spinal pain, and periodic fractures.
Other Prerequisites for Knee Pain
When the knee hurts, the cause of the sensation may also lie in the defeat of the peripheral nervous system. So, pathology of the sciatic nerve against the background of a lesion of the lumbar vertebrae leads to a number of symptoms. A person's knee is broken, the thigh area is painful, the joints of the limbs are weak, the sensitivity of the skin is disturbed. Foot reflexes also change.
Sometimes the entire knee joint is painful due to a vascular disorder. Only in adolescence you should not worry much - due to the rapid growth of the body, the blood vessels do not have time to supply blood to the bones. With age, the condition of the joint normalizes - usually between the ages of 18-20, the pain completely ceases.
In old age, accompanied by atherosclerosis, the knee also often hurts, what to do in this case? Without normalizing fat metabolism, plaque will continue to accumulate inside the arteries. The vessels become blocked, stopping an adequate supply to the joint. It develops arthrosis, the pain becomes chronic. Discomfort in the knee area can also be caused by varicose veins, thrombophlebitis and thrombophlebitis.
How to diagnose?
People's knees quite often hurt - how to treat the condition that has arisen can only be determined after an examination. Both sharp and pulling pain in the knee are characteristic of a wide range of conditions, some very dangerous. For diagnosis, you should contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist, traumatologist. He will conduct surveys, find out exactly the symptoms of the disease, identify accompanying signs. In addition, the doctor at the initial appointment will conduct a series of tests and physical examination to clarify the nature of the problem.
What to do when your knee hurts, what instrumental method will help determine the cause? Usually indicated:
- supersonic;
- Magnetic resonance imaging;
- CT;
- X-ray.
The choice of the correct technique must be left to the doctor. Therefore, ultrasound reflects well the changes of the legs with dry joints, meniscus damage. X-rays perfectly showed bone malformations, the presence of osteoblasts. MRI and CT provide complete information, they are indispensable for complex diseases. In addition, the doctor will order a blood test to rule out inflammation and rheumatism, and if necessary, a joint biopsy. With osteoporosis, it is necessary to measure the density - it will indicate the density of bone tissue in the patient.
Knee pain treatment
If the pathology is traumatic in nature, the traumatologist will be involved in the treatment, sometimes it is done in a hospital. Mild bruises will disappear on their own in a few days, to help the hematoma heal quickly, you should apply an absorbable ointment to the knee. For pain conditions, it is necessary to apply ointments with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory components.
How to treat when the knee joint is painful with its inflammatory lesions? In the acute stage of bursitis, bursitis, the injured leg needs to be rested, can apply ice for 15 minutes in the first 3 days. Relieve severe pain by injecting non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, injecting local anesthetic directly into the joint. To prevent chronic inflammation in the joints after the pain subsides, physical therapy and exercise are prescribed.
When a patient has knee pain due to warts, what to do in this case? The main drugs for treatment are chondroprotectors and hyaluronic acid injections. These drugs are designed to restore the nutrition of articular cartilage, so it stops breaking down. Also for rehabilitation of the knee must be indicated:
- vascular drugs;
- Physical therapy;
- Exercise;
- Massage;
- Vitamin complex.
Infectious diseases of the joints are indications for the introduction of antibiotics into the joint cavity or the use of oral drugs. In some cases, it is necessary to perform a surgery, to remove the tissue affected by the pus. Surgical intervention is also used to treat advanced forms of osteoarthritis with the growth of bone cells. Sometimes a joint replacement with a prosthetic leg is enough to preserve the ability to walk normally.