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 causes of pain in the knee joint, because it has a complex structure and is affected by a number of external and internal harmful factors.Some diseases are serious and require urgent treatment.
Who is more likely to injure their knee joint?
The knees are formed by 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.Disruption of even 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-absorbing abilities 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 occurs more often:
- Overweight;
- Passive lifestyle;
- High sports load;
- Diabetes mellitus;
- Vascular diseases;
- old age;
- Knee operations 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, 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, reddening of the skin and cramping.All these signs should alert a person and force him to visit a doctor.
Pain due to bruises in the knee
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 minor bruise?Even a mild injury is accompanied by bleeding in the soft periarticular tissues and their swelling.As a result, the nerve roots suffer and pain occurs.
In more severe cases, pain in the knee increases when bending and extending the leg, and the person stops moving due to sharp sensations in the joint.On palpation, you may notice swelling of the leg;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 rest to your leg.
Often the cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal bruise is traumatic hemarthrosis.This is an outflow 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 has contributed to these sensations, the causes may lie in various injuries to the components of the joint.Here are the most important ones:
- Meniscopathy.Represents a flattening or tear in the meniscus.Injuries are especially common in professional athletes, people involved in extreme sports, and also in household injuries.A person feels that the knee is sharply painful, the nature of the sensations is piercing, dagger-like, the joint loses mobility for some time.
- Ligament injuries.A tear (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.Since these ligaments are located inside the joint, the injury often leads to bleeding into the knee socket.Only a puncture helps pump out the blood and make an accurate diagnosis.
Pain in the knee joint sometimes accompanies chronic dislocations of the patella.Without treatment of the acute injury, the dislocation becomes chronic in a number of patients and causes regular recurrences.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 the surrounding soft tissue.Thus, tendinitis, or inflammation of the tendon, can be triggered by increased loads on the limb, previous leg injuries, allergies, reactions to medication, etc. With this disease, the knee joint hurts, as a rule, during the day or in the evening;the pain subsides 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 occurs inside the joint, causing bursting and sore sensations.The causes of the pathology are different:
- Autoimmune diseases;
- Metabolic diseases;
- Previous trauma;
- 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 patella area are observed.If you do not clarify in time how to treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
Neoplasms in the area of the knee joint
Malignant tumors in this location are rare;pain syndrome is characteristic only of those at the very late stage.More often, aching pain in the knee joint is characteristic of benign formations:
- Baker's cyst.This tumor occurs below the knee, on its back.In appearance, the skin over the cyst is normal, not inflamed;when bent, there may be no swelling at all.In the standing position, a clearly defined, soft, elastic formation appears at the cyst site.It appears after a unilateral knee injury or cartilage damage.Very often, the cyst accompanies chronic synovitis, arthrosis, rheumatoid arthritis.Large cysts cause not only pain in the knee, but also severe limitation of limb mobility.Due to compression of blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms include cold skin, paleness, goosebumps and numbness.
- Meniscal cyst.Appears in the outer or inner meniscus when a cavity with fluid is located inside the cartilage.In this case, the knees hurt after high loads or at the end of the day.Large cysts can be noticeable on the lateral part of the joint, small ones are only visible by ultrasound or X-ray.
A rare pathology is Hoffa's disease - transformation of the adipose tissue of the joint, which becomes fibrous and causes dysfunction of the joint.Against the background of this pathology, arthrosis often develops, which causes pain in the knee joint.Causes: hormonal imbalances, menopause in women.
Infectious joint pathologies
Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts sharply, sharply, provided that rest does not relieve the condition.Even urogenital and intestinal infections can cause musculoskeletal complications, resulting in reactive arthritis.Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) penetrate the cavity of the bone joint with the bloodstream, settle on the tissues and cause inflammation.The tendons also usually become inflamed, causing the knee to be swollen and warm to the touch.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease.Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue, causing bone melting and necrosis of cartilage and soft tissue.Without urgent treatment, the knee joints hurt and collapse, and the process covers ever larger areas.As a result, fistulas appear - cavities with pus, which can spill out and cause damage to the whole body.
An acute, acute 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 immediately call an ambulance and go to emergency surgery.Otherwise, you could lose your leg or die.
Knee pain - causes of degenerative nature
After the age of 50, a large number of people have knee pain.The prerequisites are aging of the body, wear and tear on 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 heads of the bones.Most often, in the early stage of the pathology, the knee hurts on one side;after a few years the lesion becomes bilateral.Stiffness in the leg bothers me in the morning, but it passes quickly.Increased sensations are possible after physical work, intense sports or a long walk.
In advanced stages, articular tissue collapses and osteophytes grow to the sides of the joint space.These are spines made of bone tissue, which in severe cases break off and cause unbearable pain.There are a number of other degenerative pathologies whose symptoms will resemble gonarthrosis:
- Osteochondropathy.Affects the articular surface of the bone, associated with injury and sports.It can develop in teenagers for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis.It can be rheumatoid, psoriatic, gout and causes chronic inflammation and joint destruction.
- Chondromatosis.The etiology is unclear.The disease causes the appearance of nodules on the synovial membranes, which limit the movement of the knee and cause pain.
Menopausal women often have knee pain due to osteoporosis - 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.Thus, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve on the basis of damage to the lumbar vertebrae leads to a number of symptoms.A person's knee pain, hip area pain, the joints of the limbs weaken, and the sensitivity of the skin is reduced.Leg reflexes also change.
Sometimes the whole 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 by the age of 18-20, the pain stops completely.
In old age, with atherosclerosis, the knees also often hurt, what to do in this case?Without normalization of fat metabolism, plaque will continue to be deposited inside the arteries.The tubs become clogged and stop supplying the collection altogether.Osteoarthritis develops in it, 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 have knee pain quite often;how to treat the condition can only be decided after an examination.Both sharp and nagging pains in the knee are 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 examination, find out the exact symptoms of the disease and identify accompanying signs.Also at the initial 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 help to identify the causes?Usually prescribed:
- Ultrasound;
- MRI;
- CT;
- Radiography.
The choice of the exact technique should be left to the doctor.Thus, ultrasound does a good job of reflecting changes in the bone due to osteoarthritis and damage to the menisci.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 arthritis, and if necessary, a joint biopsy will be done.For osteoporosis, densitometry is necessary - 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 go away 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 rubbed in.
How to treat when the knee hurts due to its inflammatory lesion?In the acute stage of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg requires rest;ice compresses can be applied to it for 15 minutes during the first 3 days.Severe pain is relieved with injections of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and injections of anesthetics directly into the joint.To prevent chronic inflammation in the joint after the pain subsides, 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 injections of hyaluronic acid.These medications are intended to restore nutrition to the articular cartilage, as a result of which it stops deteriorating.Also, for knee rehabilitation, the following must be prescribed:
- Vascular medicine;
- Physiotherapy;
- Gymnastics;
- Massage;
- Vitamin complexes.
Infectious diseases of the joints are an indication for the introduction of antibiotics into the joint cavities or taking drugs orally.In some cases, it is necessary to perform surgery to remove tissue affected by pus.Advanced forms of arthrosis with the proliferation of osteophytes are also treated with surgical intervention.Sometimes it is only by replacing a joint with a prosthesis that allows a person to retain the ability to walk normally.