Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms for which patients go to orthopedists and other specialists. Many people completely ignore the appearance of unpleasant sensations, considering them age-related and almost natural. But there are many prerequisites for pain in the knee joint, since it has a complex structure, it is affected by a number of external and internal damaging factors. Some illnesses are serious and require urgent treatment.
Who is most likely to have knee injuries?
The knees are made up of several bones connected by muscles, ligaments, tendons. There are also 5 synovial bursae, cavities surrounded by membranes designed to protect the joint. Between the joints of the bones is interarticular cartilage, the menisci, which help the knee move freely. Violation of the work of even part of the knee joint provokes the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Especially often pain in the knee joint appears in people with flat feet. This is a pathology of the foot, which violates the shock absorption capacity of the extremities. With age, increased loads on the joints provoke their destruction and the development of inflammation - a pain syndrome appears. Similar consequences have various types of deformation of the foot, lower leg.
There are a number of factors under the influence of which pain in the knee appears more often:
- over weight;
- passive lifestyle;
- High sports loads;
- Diabetes;
- vascular diseases;
- advanced age;
- Knee operations and injuries;
- Work with greater load on the legs.
The causes and treatment of knee pain vary widely, as does the severity of the sensations. If the knee hurts a lot, the cause may be an injury or an advanced state of osteoarthritis, a severe inflammatory process. Sometimes the symptom becomes permanent, even at rest, accompanied by swelling, reddening of the skin, and crackling. All these signs should alert a person and force him to visit a doctor.
bruised knee pain
Among the traumatic causes of joint dysfunction, hematomas are the most common. Why does the knee hurt if the symptoms were preceded only by a small bruise? Even a minor injury is accompanied by hemorrhage into the periarticular soft tissues, their swelling. As a result, the nerve roots suffer, pain appears.
In more severe cases, the pain in the knee increases with flexion and extension of the leg, the person stops moving due to acute sensations in the joint. On palpation, swelling of the leg can be noted, it is hot to the touch. How to treat such an injury? You need to contact a traumatologist, take an x-ray, follow all the recommendations and ensure the peace of mind of the leg.
Often, traumatic hemarthrosis becomes the cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal hematoma. This is an outpouring of blood into the joint cavity, causing edema, 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 the leg hurts at the knee, and the trauma contributed to these sensations, the causes may lie in various damage to the components of the joint. Here are the main ones:
- Meniscopathy. It is a flattening or tear of the meniscus. Especially often, the injury is observed in professional athletes, in people involved in extreme sports, as well as in domestic injuries. A person feels that the knee is very sick, the nature of the sensations is stabbing, dagger, the joint loses mobility for a while.
- Ligament damage. A tear (sprain) of the ligaments occurs when the leg is twisted, after a jump, the limb is extended in an unnatural position. There is a sharp pain, the leg swells, the position of the joint changes, it loosens.
- Cruciate ligament rupture. Since these ligaments are located within the joint, an injury often causes blood to leak into the knee socket. Only a puncture will help pump blood and make an accurate diagnosis.
Aching pains in the knee joint sometimes accompany chronic patellar dislocations. Without treatment of an acute injury in a number of patients, the dislocation becomes chronic and relapses regularly. In children, this pathology causes an X-shaped curvature of the leg and leads to a serious violation of its function. Sometimes the pathology affects the knees on two legs.
Inflammatory diseases of the knees.
Standard treatment for knee pain is often ineffective. In this case, not the joint itself, but the surrounding soft tissues may be affected. Therefore, tendinitis, or inflammation of the tendon, can be triggered by increased stress on the limb, past leg injuries, allergies, drug reactions, etc. The knee joint hurts with such a disease, as a rule, during the day or at night, at night the pain disappears. In the acute stage, the mobility of the joint is severely limited, the syndrome is persistent, not amenable to therapy with ointments, creams. Sharp sensations on palpation of the lateral aspect of the knee are also noted.
If the knees regularly hurt, the symptom worsens after hypothermia, the cause may be synovitis - inflammation of the synovial membranes. An inflammatory exudate appears inside the joint, which causes sensations of bursting and pain. The causes of the pathology are varied:
- Autoimmune diseases;
- Metabolic diseases;
- Past injuries;
- osteoarthritis.
Another "popular" disease in which the knees hurt is bursitis. It occurs when the bursa (joint bag) becomes inflamed. In addition to the pain syndrome, there is redness, swelling, increased sensitivity of the patella area. If you do not clarify in time how to treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
Neoplasms of the knee joint area.
Malignant tumors of this localization are rare, pain syndrome is typical for them only at a very advanced stage. More often, the pain of pain in the knee joint is inherent in benign formations:
- Baker's cyst. This tumor occurs below the knee, on its posterior surface. In appearance, the skin over the cyst is normal, not inflamed; in a folded form, the swelling may not be at all. In a standing position, a clearly defined, smooth, elastic formation appears at the site of localization of the cyst. Appears after a unilateral knee injury, suffered cartilage damage. Most 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 the compression of blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms are coldness of the 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. The knees in this case hurt after high loads or at the end of the day. Large cysts can be seen on the lateral side of the joint, while smaller ones are only visible on ultrasound or x-ray.
A rare pathology is Hoff's disease - the 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 leads to pain in the knee joint. Causes: hormonal changes, menopause in women.
Infectious pathologies of the joint.
Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts a lot, acutely, as long as rest does not bring relief. Even urogenital and intestinal infections can cause complications in the musculoskeletal system, resulting in reactive arthritis. Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococcus and others) penetrate into the joint cavity of the bones with the blood flow, settle in the tissues and cause inflammation. The tendons are also often inflamed, making the knee swollen and hot to the touch.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease. Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue, causing bone fusion, necrosis of cartilage and soft tissues. Without emergency treatment, the knee joints ache and collapse, the process covering larger and larger areas. As a result, fistulas appear - cavities with pus, which can leak out and cause damage to the entire organism.
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 aches, fever up to 40 degrees? If the pain in the knee is dull, bursting, and the tissues themselves are swollen, red and blue, you need to urgently call an ambulance and go to an emergency operation. Otherwise, you can lose a leg or die.
Knee pain - causes of a degenerative nature
After the age of 50, a large number of people have knee pain. The prerequisites are the aging of the body, the wear and tear of the joint apparatus and the development of the most common pathology - osteoarthritis (gonarthrosis). It leads to thinning, destruction of cartilage with a change in the shape of the heads of the bones. Most often, at an early stage of the pathology, the knee hurts on one side, after a few years the lesion becomes bilateral. In the morning, the stiffness in the leg is worrying, but it passes quickly. The improvement of sensations is possible after physical work, intense sports, long walks.
In advanced stages, the joint tissues collapse, osteophytes grow on the sides of the joint space. These are spikes made of bone tissue, which in severe cases break off and cause excruciating pain. There are a number of degenerative pathologies, the symptoms of which will be similar to gonarthrosis:
- Osteochondropathy. Affects the articular surface of the bone, is associated with trauma, sports. Teenagers can develop for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis. Occurs rheumatoid, psoriatic, gouty, causes chronic inflammation and destruction of the joint.
- Chondromatosis. The etiology is not clear. The disease causes the appearance of knots in the synovial membranes, which limit the movement of the knee and cause pain.
Women in menopause often have knee pain due to osteoporosis - thinning of the bones, which increases their fragility. The disease is accompanied by leg cramps, pain in the spine, periodic fractures.
Other prerequisites for knee pain
When the knees hurt, the etiology of the sensations may also lie in the defeat of the peripheral nervous system. So, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve against the background of damage to the lumbar vertebrae provokes a number of symptoms. A person's knees break, the thigh area hurts, the joints of the limbs weaken, the sensitivity of the skin is disturbed. The reflexes of the legs also change.
Sometimes the entire knee joint hurts due to vascular disorders. Only in adolescence you should not worry much: due to the rapid growth of the body, the vessels do not have time to supply blood to the bones. With age, the state of the joint normalizes; Usually, between the ages of 18 and 20, the pain disappears completely.
In old age, in the presence of atherosclerosis, the knees also often hurt, what to do in this case? Without normalizing fat metabolism, plaque will continue to build up inside the arteries. The vessels become clogged, they stop feeding the joint to the maximum. Arthrosis develops, 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's knees hurt quite often - how to treat the condition that has arisen can only be determined after examination. Sharp, pulling pains in the knee are characteristic of a large number of pathologies, some of which are very dangerous. For diagnosis, you need to contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist, traumatologist. He will conduct a survey, find out the exact symptoms of the disease and determine the accompanying signs. In addition, the doctor at the initial appointment 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 assigned:
- ultrasound;
- magnetic resonance;
- CONNECTICUT;
- Bone scan.
The choice of the exact technique should be left to the physician. So, the ultrasound reflects well the changes in the leg with arthrosis, meniscus damage. The X-ray perfectly shows bone deformities, 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, if necessary, a biopsy of the joint will be performed. With osteoporosis, densitometry is needed - it will show the density of bone tissue in a patient.
Knee pain treatment
If the pathology is of a traumatic nature, traumatologists are involved in the treatment, sometimes it is carried out in a hospital. Light bruises disappear on their own in a few days, for rapid resorption of the hematoma, it is advisable to apply absorbable ointments to the knee. With pain, it is necessary to rub ointments with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory components.
How to treat when the knee hurts with its inflammatory injury? In the acute stage of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg needs rest, ice packs can be applied to it for 15 minutes for the first 3 days. Severe pain is relieved by injections of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, injections with anesthetics directly into the joint. To prevent chronic inflammation in the joint after the pain subsides, physical therapy and exercise therapy are prescribed.
When a person has knee pain due to gonarthrosis, what to do in this case? The main drugs for treatment are chondroprotectors and injections of hyaluronic acid. These drugs are designed to restore the nutrition of articular cartilage, as a result, it stops breaking down. Also for knee rehabilitation should be assigned:
- 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 the oral administration of drugs. In some cases, it is necessary to perform an operation, removing the tissues affected by pus. Surgical intervention is also used to treat advanced forms of osteoarthritis with growth of osteophytes. Sometimes just replacing a joint with a prosthesis allows a person to maintain the ability to walk normally.