Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms with which patients consult orthopedists and other specialists.Many people completely ignore the appearance of unpleasant sensations, considering them age-related and almost natural.But there are many reasons for pain in the knee joint, because it has a complex structure and is influenced by a number of external and internal harmful factors.Some diseases 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.The rupture of even one area of the knee joint leads to the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Knee joint pain occurs mostly in people with flat feet.This is a foot condition that disrupts the shock-absorbing capabilities 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 lower leg deformities have similar consequences.
There are a number of factors under the influence of which knee pain appears more often:
- Overweight;
- Passive lifestyle;
- High sports loads;
- Diabetes mellitus;
- Vascular diseases;
- Old age;
- Knee surgeries and injuries;
- Work with a greater load on your legs.
The causes and treatment of knee pain vary greatly, as does the severity of the sensation.If the 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 crunching.All these signs should alert a person and force him to visit a doctor.
Pain due to knee bruises
Among the traumatic causes of joint dysfunction, bruising is the most common.Why does my knee hurt if the symptoms were preceded by only a small bruise?Even a mild injury is accompanied by hemorrhage in the periarticular soft tissues and their swelling.As a result, the nerve roots suffer and pain appears.
In severe cases, knee pain intensifies when bending and extending the leg and the person stops moving due to sharp sensations in the joint.Upon palpation, swelling in the leg is noted;it is warm to the touch.How to treat such an injury?You should contact a traumatologist, take an x-ray, follow all recommendations and give the leg rest.
Often the cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal bruise is traumatic hemarthrosis.This is an effusion 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 cause the development of chronic osteoarthritis even at a young age.
Other types of knee injuries
If your leg hurts at the knee and an injury has 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 even home injuries.A person feels that the knee is very painful, the nature of the sensations is piercing, dagger-like, the joint loses mobility for some time.
- Ligament damage.A tear (sprain) of the ligaments occurs when the leg is rotated, after a jump, or when the limb is extended into an unnatural position.Sharp pain appears, the leg swells, the position of the joint changes, becomes loose.
- Cruciate ligament rupture.Since these ligaments are located within the joint, the injury often leads to bleeding into the knee socket.Only a puncture will help pump blood and make an accurate diagnosis.
Aching pain in the knee joint sometimes accompanies chronic dislocations of the patella.Without treatment of the acute injury, in a number of patients the dislocation becomes chronic and causes regular relapses.In children, this pathology causes an X-shaped curvature of the leg and leads to severe impairment of its function.Sometimes the pathology affects the knees of both legs.
Inflammatory diseases of the knees
Standard treatment for knee pain is often ineffective.In this case, it may not be the joint itself that is affected, but the surrounding soft tissues.Therefore, tendonitis or tendon inflammation can be triggered by increased load on the limb, previous leg injuries, allergies, drug reactions, etc.In this disease the knee joint hurts, as a rule, during the day or in the evening;the pain decreases during the night.In the acute phase, joint mobility is severely limited, the syndrome is persistent and cannot be treated with ointments and creams.Acute sensations are also observed 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 bursting sensations and pain.The causes of the pathology are various:
- Autoimmune diseases;
- Metabolic diseases;
- Past traumas;
- Arthrosis.
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 kneecap area are observed.If it is not clarified in time how to treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
Neoplasms of the knee joint area
Malignant tumors of this site are rare;pain syndrome is characteristic of them only in the very advanced stage.More often, aching pain in the knee joint is characteristic of benign formations:
- Baker's cyst.This tumor occurs below the knee, on the back surface.In appearance, the skin over the cyst is normal, not inflamed;when folded, there may be no swelling.When standing, a clearly defined, soft and elastic formation appears at the site of the cyst.Appears after a unilateral knee injury or cartilage damage.Very often the cyst accompanies chronic synovitis, arthrosis, rheumatoid arthritis.Large cysts cause not only knee pain, but also severe limitation of limb mobility.Due to compression of blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms include cold skin, paleness, goosebumps and numbness.
- Meniscus cyst.It appears in the external or internal meniscus when a cavity with liquid is located inside the cartilage.In this case, the knees hurt after high loads or at the end of the day.Large cysts may be visible on the lateral side of the joint, small ones are only visible by 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 diseases
Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts sharply, acutely, provided that rest does not alleviate the condition.Urogenital and intestinal infections can also cause complications in the musculoskeletal system, resulting in reactive arthritis.Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) penetrate the cavity of the bone joint with the blood flow, settle on the tissues and cause inflammation.The tendons usually become inflamed as well, causing the knee to become swollen and feel warm to the touch.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease.Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue, causing bone fusion and necrosis of cartilage and soft tissue.Without emergency treatment, the knee joints hurt and collapse, and the process covers increasingly larger areas.As a result, fistulas appear - cavities with pus, which can leak and cause damage to the entire body.
An acute and urgent disease is osteomyelitis of the bone.What to do if your knees hurt and the process is accompanied by weakness, muscle pain and fever up to 40 degrees?If the pain in the knee is dull, bursting, and the tissues themselves are swollen, red and blue, you should urgently call an ambulance and undergo emergency surgery.Otherwise you could lose a leg or die.
Knee pain – causes of a degenerative nature
After the age of 50, a huge number of people suffer from knee pain.The prerequisites are the aging of the body, wear and tear of the joint system and the development of the most common pathology: arthrosis (gonarthrosis).It leads to thinning and destruction of cartilage with a change in the shape of the heads of the bones.Very often, in the initial stage of the 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 goes away quickly.An increase in sensations is possible after physical work, intense sports or long walks.
In advanced stages, joint tissues collapse and osteophytes grow on the sides of the joint space.These are thorns made of bone tissue, which in the most serious cases break and cause unbearable pain.There are numerous other degenerative pathologies, the symptoms of which will be similar to gonarthrosis:
- Osteochondropathy.Affects the articular surface of the bone, associated with injuries and sports.It can develop in adolescents for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis.It can be rheumatoid, psoriatic, gouty and causes chronic inflammation and destruction of the joints.
- Chondromatosis.The etiology is unclear.The disease causes nodules to appear on the synovial membranes, which limit knee movement and cause pain.
Menopausal women often suffer from knee pain due to osteoporosis: thinning of the bones, which increases their fragility.The disease is accompanied by leg cramps, pain in the spine 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.Therefore, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve against the background of damage to the lumbar vertebrae leads to a number of symptoms.The knees hurt, the hip area hurts, the joints in the limbs become weak, 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 you should 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 disappears completely.
In old age, with atherosclerosis, the knees also often hurt, what to do in this case?Without normalizing fat metabolism, plaque will continue to deposit inside the arteries.The vessels become clogged and stop supplying the joint completely.In it, arthrosis 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 have knee pain quite often;How to treat the condition can only be determined after an examination.Both sharp and nagging knee pain are characteristic of many pathologies, some of which are very dangerous.For diagnosis, you need to contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist or traumatologist.He will conduct a survey, find out the exact symptoms of the disease and identify the accompanying signs.Furthermore, during the first visit, the doctor will carry out a series of tests and physical examinations 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;
- MRI;
- CT;
- X-ray.
Choosing the exact technique should be left to the doctor.Therefore, ultrasound well reflects changes in the leg due to osteoarthritis and damage to the menisci.The x-rays perfectly show the bone deformations and the presence of osteophytes.MRI and CT provide complete information;they are essential for complex diseases.In addition, the doctor will prescribe blood tests to exclude inflammation and rheumatism and, if necessary, a joint biopsy will be performed.For osteoporosis, densitometry is needed: it will show the patient's bone density.
Treatment of knee pain
If the pathology is traumatic in nature, treatment is carried out by traumatologists, sometimes it is carried out in a hospital.Light 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, it is necessary to apply ointments with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory components.
How to treat when the knee hurts due to its inflammatory lesion?In the acute phase of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg needs rest;During the first 3 days you can apply ice packs for 15 minutes.Severe pain is relieved with injections of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and injections of anesthetics directly into the joint.To prevent chronic inflammation of the joint after the pain disappears, physiotherapy and exercise therapy are prescribed.
When a person has pain in the knees due to gonarthrosis, what should he do in this case?The main drugs for treatment are chondroprotectors and hyaluronic acid injections.These drugs are aimed at restoring the nutrition of the articular cartilage, so that it stops deteriorating.In addition, for knee rehabilitation, the following must be prescribed:
- Vascular drugs;
- Physiotherapy;
- Gymnastics;
- Massage;
- Vitamin complexes.
Infectious diseases of the joints are an indication for the introduction of antibiotics into the joint cavities or for taking drugs orally.In some cases it is necessary to perform surgery to remove the tissue affected by pus.Even advanced forms of osteoarthritis with proliferation of osteophytes are treated with surgery.Sometimes only replacing a joint with a prosthesis allows a person to maintain the ability to walk normally.