Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms that brings patients to orthopedists and other specialists.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 diverse, because it has a complex structure and is influenced by a variety of external and internal damaging factors.Some diseases are serious and require urgent treatment.
Who is more prone to injuring their knee joints?
The knees are made up of several bones connected by muscles, ligaments and tendons.There are also 5 synovial bursa – cavities surrounded by membranes designed to protect the joint.Between the bone joints there are interarticular cartilages - menisci, which help the knee to move freely.Disruption of even one area of the knee joint leads to the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Knee joint pain is particularly common in people with flat feet.This is a foot pathology that affects the ability of the limbs to absorb shock.With increasing age, increased loads on the joints lead to their destruction and the development of inflammatory phenomena - a pain syndrome occurs.Different types of deformities of the foot and lower leg have similar consequences.
There are a number of factors that cause knee pain to occur more frequently:
- obesity;
- Passive lifestyle;
- High levels of sporting stress;
- diabetes mellitus;
- vascular diseases;
- Age;
- knee surgeries and injuries;
- Work with increased strain on your legs.
The causes and treatment of knee pain vary widely, as does the severity of the feeling.If your knee hurts a lot, the cause may be an injury or advanced osteoarthritis, a serious inflammatory process.Sometimes the symptom becomes permanent and occurs even at rest, accompanied by swelling, redness of the skin and grinding.All of these signs should alert a person and force him to see a doctor.
Pain due to bruises in the knee
Among the traumatic causes of joint dysfunction, the most common is bruising.Why does my knee hurt if the pain was only preceded by a slight bruise?Even a minor injury is accompanied by bleeding into the soft periarticular tissue and its swelling.This causes the nerve roots to suffer and pain occurs.
In more serious cases, the pain in the knee increases when bending and straightening the leg, and the person stops due to sharp sensations in the joint.When palpated, you may notice swelling of the leg;it feels hot.How do you treat such an injury?You should contact a traumatologist, take an x-ray, follow all the recommendations and give your leg rest.
The cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal bruise is often traumatic hemarthrosis.This causes blood to flow into the joint cavity, causing edema and swelling of the synovial membranes.This causes the joint to fill with blood and inflammation occurs.Without appropriate treatment, an injury can lead to the development of chronic osteoarthritis at a young age.
Other types of knee injuries
If your leg hurts in the knee and an injury contributed to these sensations, the cause may lie in various damage to the joint components.Here are the most important ones:
- Meniscopathy.Represents a flattening or tear of the meniscus. Injuries are particularly common among professional athletes, extreme athletes and also household injuries.A person feels that the knee hurts badly, the sensations are piercing, dagger-like, the joint loses mobility for some time.
- Ligament damage.A torn ligament (sprain) occurs when the leg is twisted, after a jump, or when the limb is stretched into an unnatural position.Stinging pain occurs, the leg swells, the position of the joint changes, it becomes loose.
- Cruciate ligament tear.Because these ligaments lie inside the joint, the injury often results in bleeding into the knee cavity.Only a puncture helps to pump out the blood and make an accurate diagnosis.
Painful pain in the knee joint is sometimes accompanied by chronic dislocations of the patella.Without treatment of an acute injury, in some patients the dislocation becomes chronic and leads to periodic 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
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 tissue.Tendonitis or tendonitis can be triggered by increased stress on the extremity, leg injuries, allergies, reactions to medication, etc.With this disease, the knee joint usually hurts during the day or evening;The pain subsides at night.In the acute stage, joint mobility is severely limited, the syndrome persists 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 and the symptom worsens after hypothermia, the cause may be synovitis - inflammation of the synovial membranes.An inflammatory exudate forms inside the joint, causing rupture and pain.The causes of pathology are diverse:
- 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 area are observed.If it is not clarified in time how to treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
New growths in the knee joint area
Malignant tumors of this location are rare;The pain syndrome is characteristic of them only in the very late stages.More often, aching pain in the knee joint is characteristic of benign formations:
- Baker's cyst.This tumor occurs below the knee on his backside.The skin over the cyst looks normal and not inflamed.When bending, there may be no swelling at all.When standing, a clearly defined, soft, elastic formation forms at the site of the cyst.It occurs after a unilateral knee injury or cartilage damage.Very often the cyst is accompanied by chronic synovitis, arthrosis and rheumatoid arthritis.Large cysts not only cause knee pain, but also severe limitation of limb mobility.Due to the compression of blood vessels and nerves, cold skin, paleness, goosebumps and numbness occur, among other things.
- Meniscus cyst.Occurs in the lateral or medial meniscus when there is a cavity with fluid in the cartilage.In this case, the knees hurt after heavy exertion 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-ray.
A rare pathology is Hoffa's disease - a transformation of the fatty tissue of the joint, which becomes fibrous and causes dysfunction of the joint.Against the background of this pathology, arthrosis often develops, provoking pain in the knee joint.Reasons: hormonal imbalances, menopause in women.
Infectious joint diseases
Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts badly, strongly, rest does not relieve the condition.Genitourinary and intestinal infections can also cause complications in the musculoskeletal system and lead to reactive arthritis.Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) penetrate the cavity of the bone joint through the bloodstream, settle in the tissue and cause inflammation.The tendons usually also become inflamed, causing the knee to swell and feel hot.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease.Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue, causing bone melting and necrosis of cartilage and soft tissue.Without emergency treatment, the knee joints hurt and collapse, and the process affects larger and larger areas.This creates fistulas - cavities with pus that can leak out and damage the entire body.
An acute, 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 boring, bursting, and the tissue itself is swollen, red and blue, you should urgently call an ambulance and undergo emergency surgery.Otherwise, you may lose your leg or die.
Knee pain – causes of a degenerative nature
From the age of 50 onwards, many people suffer from knee pain.The prerequisites are the aging of the body, wear and tear of the joint apparatus and the development of the most common pathology – osteoarthritis (gonarthrosis).It leads to thinning and destruction of cartilage with a change in the shape of the bone heads.Most often, in the early stages of pathology, knee pain occurs 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 walking.
In advanced stages, the joint tissue collapses and osteophytes grow on the sides of the joint space.These are spines made of bone tissue that, in severe cases, break off and cause unbearable pain.There are a number of other degenerative diseases whose symptoms are similar to 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 or gouty, causing chronic inflammation and joint destruction.
- Chondromatosis.The etiology is unclear.The disease causes the appearance of nodules on the synovial membranes, which restrict the movement of the knee and cause pain.
Menopausal women often experience knee pain due to osteoporosis - a thinning of the bones that increases their brittleness.The disease is accompanied by leg cramps, pain in the spine and periodic fractures.
Other causes of knee pain
If your knees hurt, the cause of the feeling may also be 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.A person's knees hurt, the hip area hurts, the joints of the limbs weaken, and skin sensitivity is impaired.The leg reflexes also change.
Sometimes the entire knee joint hurts due to vascular diseases.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 the bones with blood.With age, the condition of the joint normalizes - usually the pain stops completely by the age of 18-20.
In old age, with arteriosclerosis, the knees often hurt, what should you do in this case?Without normalization of fat metabolism, plaque continues to build up in the arteries.The vessels become clogged and no longer supply the joint completely.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 do you make a diagnosis?
People experience knee pain quite often;How the disease should be treated can only be decided after an examination.Both sharp and shooting pains in the knee are characteristic of many pathologies, some of which are very dangerous.For diagnosis, you should contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist or traumatologist.He carries out a survey, determines the exact symptoms of the disease and identifies accompanying symptoms.Also, at the first appointment, the doctor will conduct a series of tests and physical examinations to clarify the nature of the problem.
What to do if your knees hurt, what instrumental methods will help determine the causes?Usually prescribed:
- Ultrasonic;
- MRI;
- CT;
- Radiography.
The choice of the exact technique should be left to the doctor.Ultrasound can therefore show changes in the leg due to osteoarthritis and damage to the menisci well.X-rays perfectly show bone deformations and the presence of osteophytes.MRI and CT 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, carry out a joint biopsy.In osteoporosis, densitometry is required - it shows the patient's bone density.
Treatment of knee pain
If the pathology is of a traumatic nature, treatment is carried out by traumatologists, sometimes in a hospital.Easy bruising will disappear on its own within a few days;To quickly dissolve the hematoma, it is recommended to apply absorbable ointments to the knee.If pain occurs, ointments containing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory components should be rubbed in.
How to treat if the knee hurts due to an inflammatory lesion?In the acute stage of bursitis, synovitis or arthritis, the affected leg requires rest;Ice compresses can be placed on top for 15 minutes in 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 in the joint after the pain has subsided, physiotherapy and exercise therapy are prescribed.
In this case, what should a person do if he has pain in his knees due to gonarthrosis?The main drugs for treatment are chondroprotectors and injections of hyaluronic acid.These medications are designed to restore nutrition to the articular cartilage and thus stop its breakdown.In addition, the following must be prescribed for knee rehabilitation:
- vascular medications;
- physiotherapy;
- Gymnastics;
- Massage;
- Vitamin complexes.
Infectious diseases of the joints are an indication for introducing antibiotics into the joint cavities or taking medications orally.In some cases, surgery is necessary to remove pus-infested tissue.Advanced forms of osteoarthritis with osteophyte proliferation are also treated surgically.Sometimes only by replacing a joint with a prosthesis can a person maintain the ability to walk normally.