Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms that patients see orthopedists and other specialists for.Many people completely ignore the appearance of unpleasant sensations, considering them age-related and almost natural.But the reasons for pain in the knee joint are many, as it has a complex structure and is affected by a number of external and internal damaging factors.Some illnesses are serious and require urgent treatment.
Who is most likely to injure their knee joints?
The knees are made up of several bones connected by muscles, ligaments and tendons.There are also 5 synovial bursae – cavities surrounded by membranes designed to protect the joint.Between the joints of the bones there are interarticular cartilages - menisci, which help the knee to move freely.Rupture of even one area of the knee joint leads to the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Pain in the knee joint occurs especially in people with flat feet.This is a foot pathology that disrupts the shock-absorbing capacity of the limbs.With age, the increased load on the joints causes their destruction and the development of inflammatory phenomena - pain syndrome appears.Various types of foot and leg deformities have similar consequences.
There are several factors under the influence of which knee pain appears most often:
- Overweight;
- Passive lifestyle;
- High sports loads;
- Diabetes mellitus;
- Vascular diseases;
- Old age;
- Knee surgeries and injuries;
- Work with greater load on your legs.
The causes and treatment of knee pain vary greatly, as does the severity of the sensation.If your knee hurts a lot, the cause could be an injury or an advanced stage of osteoarthritis, a serious inflammatory process.Sometimes, the symptom becomes permanent, present even at rest, accompanied by swelling, redness of the skin and crackling.All these signs should alert a person and force him to see a doctor.
Pain due to knee bruises
Among the traumatic causes of joint dysfunction, bruises are the most common.Why does my knee hurt if the symptoms were preceded by just a small bruise?Even a mild injury is accompanied by hemorrhage into the periarticular soft tissues and their swelling.As a result, the nerve roots suffer and pain appears.
In more severe cases, knee pain intensifies when bending and extending the leg, and the person stops moving due to sharp sensations in the joint.On palpation, you may notice swelling in the leg;it is hot to the touch.How to treat such an injury?You should see a traumatologist, take an x-ray, follow all recommendations and rest your leg.
Often the cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal hematoma is traumatic hemarthrosis.This is an outpouring of blood into the joint cavity, causing edema and swelling of the synovial membranes.As a result, the joint fills with blood and inflammation begins.Without proper treatment, an injury can result in the development of chronic osteoarthritis even at a young age.
Other types of knee injuries
If your leg hurts in the knee and an injury contributed to these sensations, the reasons may lie in various damage to the components of the joint.Here are the main ones:
- Meniscopathy.It represents a flattening or tear of the meniscus.Injuries are especially common in professional athletes, people involved in extreme sports, and household injuries.A person feels that the knee hurts a lot, the nature of the sensations is piercing, similar to a dagger, the joint loses mobility for some time.
- Ligament damage.A rupture (sprain) of the ligaments occurs when the leg is twisted, after a jump or when the limb is extended in an unnatural position.A sharp pain appears, the leg swells, the position of the joint changes, it becomes loose.
- Cruciate ligament rupture.Because these ligaments are located inside the joint, the injury often causes bleeding into the knee socket.Only a puncture will help pump the blood and make an accurate diagnosis.
Severe pain in the knee joint sometimes accompanies chronic patellar dislocations.Without treatment of the acute injury, in many patients the dislocation becomes chronic and causes regular relapses.In children, this pathology causes an X-shaped curvature of the leg and leads to serious impairment of its function.Sometimes the pathology affects the knees of both legs.
Inflammatory diseases of the knees
Often, standard treatment for knee pain is ineffective.In this case, it may not be the joint itself that is affected, but rather the surrounding soft tissues.Thus, tendinitis, or inflammation of the tendon, can be triggered by increased load on the limb, previous leg injuries, allergies, reactions to medications, etc.With this disease, the knee joint hurts, as a rule, during the day or at night;the pain subsides at night.In the acute phase, joint mobility is severely limited, the syndrome is persistent and cannot be treated with ointments and creams.Sharp sensations are also noted when palpating the lateral part of the knee.
If your knees hurt regularly, the symptom worsens after hypothermia, the cause may be synovitis - inflammation of the synovial membranes.An inflammatory exudate appears inside the joint, causing sensations of rupture and pain.The causes of the pathology are varied:
- Autoimmune diseases;
- Metabolic diseases;
- Past traumas;
- Osteoarthritis.
Another “popular” disease that causes knee pain is bursitis.It occurs when the bursa (joint capsule) becomes inflamed.In addition to pain, redness, swelling and increased sensitivity of the patellar region are observed.If you don't clarify in time how to treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
Neoplasms of the knee joint area
Malignant tumors in this location are rare;pain syndrome is characteristic of them only at a very advanced stage.More often, pain in the knee joint is characteristic of benign formations:
- Baker's cyst.This tumor occurs under the knee, on the posterior surface.In appearance, the skin over the cyst is normal, not inflamed;when folded, there may be no swelling.In the standing position, an elastic, soft, clearly defined formation appears at the site of the cyst.It appears after a unilateral knee injury or cartilage damage.Often the cyst accompanies chronic synovitis, arthrosis, rheumatoid arthritis.Large cysts cause not only knee pain but also serious limitation of limb mobility.Due to compression of blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms include cold skin, paleness, chills and numbness.
- Meniscal cyst.It appears in the external or internal meniscus when a cavity with fluid is located inside the cartilage.In this case, the knees hurt after heavy loads or at the end of the day.Large cysts may be visible on the side of the joint, small ones are visible only on ultrasound or x-ray.
A rare pathology is Hoffa's disease - transformation of the fatty tissue of the joint, which becomes fibrous and causes joint dysfunction.Against the background of this pathology, arthrosis often develops, which causes pain in the knee joint.Reasons: hormonal imbalances, menopause in women.
Infectious joint pathologies
Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts very, very much, providing rest does not alleviate the condition.Even urogenital and intestinal infections can cause complications in the musculoskeletal system, resulting in reactive arthritis.Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) penetrate the bone joint cavity with the bloodstream, settle in the tissues and cause inflammation.The tendons also often become inflamed, causing the knee to feel swollen and hot to the touch.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease.Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue, causing bone fusion and necrosis of cartilage and soft tissues.Without emergency treatment, knee joints hurt and collapse, and the process covers increasingly larger areas.As a result, fistulas appear - cavities filled with pus, which can leak and cause damage to the entire body.
An acute and urgent disease is bone osteomyelitis.What to do if your knees hurt and the process is accompanied by weakness, muscle pain and a fever of up to 40 degrees?If the knee pain is dull, bursting, and the tissues themselves are swollen, red and blue, you should urgently call an ambulance and have emergency surgery.Otherwise, you could lose your leg or die.
Knee pain – causes of a degenerative nature
After the age of 50, a large number of people experience knee pain.Prerequisites are the aging of the body, wear and tear of the articular apparatus and the development of the most common pathology - osteoarthritis (gonarthrosis).This leads to thinning and destruction of the cartilage with a change in the shape of the bone heads.Most often, at the initial stage of pathology, the knee hurts on one side;After a few years, the lesion becomes bilateral.The stiffness in my leg bothers me in the morning, but it goes away quickly.Increased sensations are possible after physical work, intense sports or long walks.
In advanced stages, the joint tissues collapse and osteophytes grow on the sides of the joint space.They are spines made of bone tissue that, in severe cases, break and cause unbearable pain.There are several other degenerative pathologies, the symptoms of which will be similar to those of gonarthrosis:
- Osteochondropathy.Affects the articular surface of the bone, associated with injuries and sports.It can develop in teenagers for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis.It can be rheumatoid, psoriatic, gouty and causes chronic inflammation and joint destruction.
- Chondromatosis.The etiology is unclear.The disease causes the appearance of nodules in the synovial membranes, which limit knee movement and cause pain.
Menopausal women often experience knee pain due to osteoporosis – thinning of the bones, increasing their fragility.The disease is accompanied by leg cramps, back pain and periodic fractures.
Other causes of knee pain
When your knees hurt, the etiology of the sensation may also lie in damage to the peripheral nervous system.Thus, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve against the background of damage to the lumbar vertebrae leads to a number of symptoms.A person's knees hurt, the hip area hurts, the joints of the limbs weaken, and the sensitivity of the skin is impaired.Leg reflexes also change.
Sometimes the entire knee joint hurts due to vascular disorders.Only in adolescence should you not worry too much - due to the rapid growth of the body, the vessels do not have time to supply blood to the bones.With age, the condition of the joint normalizes - usually by the age of 18-20 the pain completely stops.
In old age, with atherosclerosis, knees also often hurt, what to do in this case?Without normalizing fat metabolism, plaque will continue to be deposited within the arteries.The vessels become obstructed and stop completely supplying the joint.Osteoarthritis develops and the pain becomes chronic.Unpleasant sensations in the knee area can also be caused by varicose veins, thrombophlebitis and vascular thrombosis.
How to make a diagnosis?
People experience knee pain quite often;How to treat the disease can only be determined after an examination.Both sharp and dull knee pain are characteristic of many pathologies, some of which are very dangerous.For diagnosis, you must contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist or traumatologist.He will do research, find out the exact symptoms of the disease and identify the signs that accompany it.Additionally, at the initial consultation, the doctor will perform a series of tests and physical exams to clarify the nature of the problem.
What to do when your knees hurt, what instrumental methods will help identify the causes?Usually prescribed:
- Ultrasound;
- magnetic resonance imaging;
- TC;
- Radiography.
The choice of the exact technique should be left to the doctor.Thus, ultrasound does a good job of reflecting changes in the leg due to osteoarthritis and damage to the menisci.Radiographs clearly show bone deformations and the presence of osteophytes.Magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography provide complete information;they are indispensable for complex diseases.In addition, the doctor will prescribe blood tests to rule out inflammation and rheumatism and, if necessary, a joint biopsy will be performed.For osteoporosis, densitometry is necessary - it will show the patient's bone density.
Knee pain treatment
If the pathology is traumatic in nature, treatment is carried out by traumatologists, sometimes in a hospital.Mild bruises disappear on their own within a few days;To quickly resolve the hematoma, it is advisable to apply absorbable ointments to the knee.If pain occurs, ointments with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory components should be applied.
How to treat when the knee hurts due to an inflammatory lesion?In the acute phase of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg needs rest;Ice packs can be applied for 15 minutes during the first 3 days.Severe pain is relieved with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug injections and anesthetic injections directly into the joint.To prevent chronic inflammation in the joint after the pain subsides, physiotherapy and exercise therapy are prescribed.
When a person feels pain in their knees due to gonarthrosis, what should they do in this case?The main medications for treatment are chondroprotectors and hyaluronic acid injections.These medications aim to restore nutrition to the articular cartilage, stopping it from deteriorating.Additionally, for knee rehabilitation, the following should be prescribed:
- Vascular medicines;
- Physiotherapy;
- Gymnastics;
- Massage;
- Vitamin complexes.
Infectious diseases of the joints are an indication for the introduction of antibiotics into the joint cavities or the administration of medications orally.In some cases, surgery is necessary to remove the tissue affected by the pus.Advanced forms of osteoarthritis with osteophyte proliferation are also treated with surgical intervention.Sometimes just replacing a joint with a prosthesis allows a person to maintain the ability to walk normally.