Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms for 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 causes of pain in the knee joint, since 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 are interarticular cartilages - the menisci, which help the knee to move freely.Disruption of just one area of the knee joint leads to the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Pain in the knee joint occurs especially often in people with flat feet.This is a foot pathology that disrupts the shock absorption capabilities of the limbs.With age, increased loads on the joints cause their destruction and the development of inflammatory phenomena - pain syndrome appears.Different 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 increased load on the legs.
The causes and treatment of knee pain vary widely, as does the severity of the sensation.If your knee hurts a lot, the cause may 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 cracking sounds.All these signs should alert a person and force him to consult 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 only preceded by a slight bruise?Even a slight injury is accompanied by hemorrhage of periarticular soft tissues and their swelling.As a result, the nerve roots suffer and pain appears.
In more severe cases, knee pain intensifies when flexion and extension of the leg, and the person stops moving due to sharp sensations in the joint.On palpation, you may notice swelling in the leg;it feels warm to the touch.How to treat such an injury?You need to contact a traumatologist, take an x-ray, follow all recommendations and rest your leg.
Traumatic hemarthrosis is often the cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal bruise.This is a rush 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 lead to 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 damages to the components of the joint.Here are the main ones:
- Meniscopathy.Represents a flattening or tearing of the meniscus.Injuries are particularly common among professional athletes, people engaged in extreme sports and also in household injuries.A person feels that the knee is extremely painful, the nature of the sensations is piercing, like a dagger, the joint loses mobility for some time.
- Ligament damage.A tear (sprain) of the ligaments occurs when the leg is twisted, after jumping, or when the limb is extended in an unnatural position.Sharp pain appears, the leg swells, the position of the joint changes, it relaxes.
- Cruciate ligament rupture.Since these ligaments are located inside the joint, the injury often results in bleeding into the knee socket.Only a puncture will allow the blood to drain and a precise diagnosis to be made.
Aching pain in the knee joint sometimes accompanies chronic patellar dislocations.Without treatment of an 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 a serious impairment of its function.Sometimes the pathology affects the knees of both legs.
Inflammatory knee diseases
Often, standard treatment for knee pain is ineffective.In this case, it may not be the joint itself that is affected, but the surrounding soft tissues.So, tendinitis, or inflammation of the tendon, can be triggered by increased loads on the limb, previous injuries to the leg, allergies, reactions to medications, etc.With this disease, the knee joint usually hurts during the day or evening;the pain lessens at night.In the acute stage, joint mobility is severely limited, the syndrome is persistent and cannot be treated with ointments and creams.Sharp 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 feelings of bursting and pain.The causes of the pathology are varied:
- Autoimmune diseases;
- Metabolic diseases;
- Past trauma;
- Osteoarthritis.
Bursitis is another “popular” disease that causes knee pain.This happens when the bursa (joint capsule) becomes inflamed.In addition to pain, there is redness, swelling and increased sensitivity in the patellar area.If you do not clarify in time how to treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
Tumors of the knee joint region
Malignant tumors of this location are rare;the pain syndrome is characteristic of them only at a very advanced stage.Most often, aching pain in the knee joint is characteristic of benign formations:
- Baker's cyst.This tumor appears under the knee, on its back side.In appearance, the skin covering the cyst is normal and not inflamed;when folded, there may be no swelling.When standing, a clearly defined, soft and elastic formation appears at the location of the cyst.It appears after a unilateral knee injury or cartilage damage.Very often, the cyst accompanies chronic synovitis, osteoarthritis, 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, goose bumps and numbness.
- Meniscus cyst.Appears in the external or internal meniscus when a cavity containing fluid 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 part of the joint, small ones are only visible on ultrasound or x-rays.
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, osteoarthritis often develops, which causes pain in the knee joint.Reasons: hormonal imbalances, menopause in women.
Infectious joint pathologies
Against the background of an infection, the knee joint hurts very much, provided that rest does not relieve the disease.Even urogenital and intestinal infections can cause complications in the musculoskeletal system, leading to reactive arthritis.Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) enter the cavity of the bone joint with the bloodstream, settle on the tissues and cause inflammation.The tendons usually also become inflamed, causing the knee to swell and feel warm to the touch.
Tuberculosis is a serious illness.Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue, causing bone wasting and necrosis of cartilage and soft tissues.Without emergency treatment, knee joints hurt and collapse, and the process covers larger and larger areas.As a result, fistulas appear - cavities containing pus, which can flow and cause damage to the whole body.
Bone osteomyelitis is an acute and urgent disease.What to do if your knees hurt and the process is accompanied by weakness, muscle pain and fever up to 40 degrees?If the knee pain is annoying, bursting, and the tissues themselves are swollen, red and blue, you need to urgently call an ambulance and undergo emergency surgery.Otherwise, you risk losing your leg or dying.
Knee pain – causes of a degenerative nature
After the age of 50, a large number of people suffer from knee pain.The prerequisites are aging of the body, wear and tear of the joint apparatus and the development of the most common pathology - osteoarthritis (gonarthrosis).It causes thinning and destruction of cartilage with a change in the shape of the bone heads.Most often, at the early 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 it goes away quickly.Increased sensations are possible after physical work, intense sports or a long walk.
In advanced stages, joint tissues collapse and osteophytes develop on the sides of the joint space.These are thorns made of bone tissue which, in severe cases, break and cause unbearable pain.There are a number of other degenerative pathologies whose symptoms will be similar to those of knee osteoarthritis:
- Osteochondropathy.Affects the articular surface of bone, associated with injuries and sports.It can develop in adolescents for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis.It can be rheumatoid, psoriatic, gouty and cause chronic inflammation and destruction of the joints.
- Chondromatosis.The etiology is unclear.The disease causes the appearance of lymph nodes on the synovial membranes, which limit knee movement and cause pain.
Postmenopausal women often experience knee pain due to osteoporosis - a thinning of the bones, increasing 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.So, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve against the background of damage to the lumbar vertebrae leads to a number of symptoms.The knees and hips are painful, 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 you should not worry too much - due to the rapid growth of the body, the vessels do not have time to supply the bones with blood.With age, the condition of the joint normalizes - usually between the ages of 18 and 20, the pain stops completely.
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 inside the arteries.The vessels become blocked and stop completely supplying the joint.Osteoarthritis develops and the pain becomes chronic.Unpleasant sensations in the knee 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 disease can only be determined after an examination.Sharp, shooting pain in the knee is characteristic of many pathologies, some of them are very dangerous.For diagnosis, you should contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist or traumatologist.He will conduct an investigation, find out the exact symptoms of the disease and identify the accompanying signs.Additionally, during the first appointment, the doctor will perform 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 scan;
- X-ray.
The choice of the exact technique should be left to the physician.Thus, ultrasound well reflects changes in the leg due to osteoarthritis and damage to the menisci.X-rays perfectly show bone deformations and the presence of osteophytes.MRI and CT scan provide comprehensive information;they are essential for complex diseases.In addition, the doctor will order blood tests to rule out inflammation and rheumatism and, if necessary, a joint biopsy will be performed.For osteoporosis, densitometry is necessary – this 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 in a hospital.Mild bruising goes away on its own within a few days;To quickly resolve the hematoma, it is advisable to apply absorbable ointments to the knee.In case of pain, ointments containing nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory components should be applied.
How to treat when the knee hurts because of its inflammatory lesion?In the acute stage of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg needs rest;ice packs can be applied there for 15 minutes for the first 3 days.Severe pain is relieved by injections of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and injections of anesthetics directly into the joint.To prevent chronic inflammation of the joint after the pain subsides, physiotherapy and exercise therapy are prescribed.
When a person has knee pain due to knee osteoarthritis, what should they do in this case?The main treatment drugs are chondroprotectors and hyaluronic acid injections.These medications are intended to restore nutrition to the articular cartilage, allowing it to stop deteriorating.Also, for knee rehabilitation, must be prescribed:
- Vascular drugs;
- Physiotherapy;
- Gymnastics;
- Massage;
- Vitamin complexes.
Infectious joint diseases are an indication for the introduction of antibiotics into the joint cavities or taking medications orally.In some cases, it is necessary to carry out surgery to remove the tissue affected by the pus.Advanced forms of osteoarthritis with osteophyte proliferation are also treated by surgery.Sometimes, only replacing a joint with a prosthesis allows a person to maintain their ability to walk normally.