Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms patients turn 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, because it is complex and is influenced by a number of external and internal damaging factors. Some diseases are serious and require urgent treatment.
Who is more likely to have knee injuries?
The knees are made up of several bones connected by muscles, ligaments and tendons. There are also 5 synovial bags - 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 a part of the knee joint leads to the appearance of unpleasant symptoms.
Pain in the knee joint is particularly common in people with flat feet. This is a pathology of the foot that violates the shock-absorbing capabilities of the limbs. With age, increased loads on the joints lead to their destruction and the development of inflammation - a pain syndrome appears. Similar consequences have different types of deformations of the foot, lower leg.
There are a number of factors under the influence of which pain in the knee occurs more often:
- overweight;
- passive lifestyle;
- High sporting loads;
- diabetes mellitus;
- vascular diseases;
- older age;
- operations and injuries of the knees;
- Work with increased 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 can be an injury or advanced arthrosis, a serious inflammatory process. Sometimes the symptom becomes persistent even at rest, accompanied by swelling, skin redness, and a crunching sound. All these signs should alert a person and force him to see a doctor.
Pain from bruises in the knee
Among the traumatic causes of joint dysfunction, bruises are the most common. Why does the knee hurt when the symptoms were preceded by a small bruise? Even a slight injury is accompanied by bleeding into the soft periarticular 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 sharp sensations in the joint. Swelling of the leg can be noted on palpation, it feels hot to the touch. How do you treat such an injury? You should contact a traumatologist, take an X-ray, follow all the recommendations and calm the leg.
Often traumatic hemarthrosis after a banal bruise becomes the cause of pain in the knee joint. This is an outflow of blood into the joint cavity, which leads to edema and swelling of the synovial membranes. As a result, the joint fills with blood, inflammation begins in it. Without proper treatment, an injury at a young age can lead to the development of chronic osteoarthritis.
Other types of knee injuries
If the leg hurts in the knee, and trauma contributed to these sensations, the causes can be various damage to the components of the joint. Here are the main ones:
- meniscopathy. It is a flattening or tearing of the meniscus. The injury is particularly often observed in professional athletes, extreme athletes, as well as domestic injuries. A person feels that the knee is badly ill, the nature of the sensations is piercing, dagger, the joint loses mobility for a while.
- ligament damage. A rupture (sprain) of the ligaments occurs when the leg is twisted, after a jump the limb is stretched in an unnatural position. There is a sharp pain, the leg swells, the position of the joint changes, it becomes loose.
- Cruciate ligament tear. Since these ligaments are located in the joint, an injury often results in blood leakage into the knee cavity. Only a puncture will help pump blood and make an accurate diagnosis.
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 leads to periodic recurrences. In children, this pathology causes an X-shaped curvature of the leg and leads to a serious dysfunction. Sometimes the pathology affects the knees on two legs.
Inflammatory diseases of the knees
Often the standard treatment for knee pain is ineffective. In this case, not the joint itself, but the surrounding soft tissues may be affected. So, tendonitis or tendinitis can be triggered by increased stress on the limb, past leg injuries, allergies, drug reactions, etc. With such a disease, the knee joint usually hurts during the day or in the evening, and the pain subsides at night. 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 are also observed when palpating the lateral part of the knee.
If the knees regularly hurt, the symptom worsens after hypothermia, the cause may be synovitis - inflammation of the synovial membranes. Inflammatory exudate occurs in the joint, causing rupture and pain. The causes of pathology are diverse:
- autoimmune diseases;
- metabolic diseases;
- injuries in the past;
- Arthrosis.
Another "popular" disease in which the knees hurt is bursitis. It occurs when the bursa (joint sac) becomes inflamed. Along with the pain syndrome, there is redness, swelling, increased sensitivity of the patellar zone. If you do not clarify in time howWhen you treat bursitis, it almost always becomes chronic.
Neoplasms of the knee joint zone
Malignant tumors of this localization are rare, pain syndromes are typical for them only at a very late stage. More often, aching pain in the knee joint is inherent in 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, in a curved shape, the swelling may not be at all. When standing, a clearly defined, soft, elastic formation appears at the site of localization of the cyst. After a unilateral knee injury, cartilage damage is shown. Very often the cyst accompanies chronic synovitis, arthrosis, rheumatoid arthritis. Large cysts cause not only pain in the knee, but also a serious limitation in limb mobility. Due to the compression of blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms include coldness of the skin, paleness, goose bumps, and numbness.
- meniscus cyst. Appears in the lateral or medial meniscus when there is a cavity with fluid in the cartilage. In this case, the knees hurt after high loads or towards the end of the day. Large cysts may be visible on the lateral side of the joint, while smaller ones are only visible on ultrasound or X-rays.
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, provoking pain in the knee joint. Causes - hormonal disorders, menopause in women.
Infectious pathologies of the joint
Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts badly, badly, if rest does not bring relief. Even urogenital and intestinal infections can lead to musculoskeletal complications, resulting in reactive arthritis. Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) penetrate the joint cavity of the bones with the blood flow, settle in the tissues and cause inflammation. The tendons are also usually inflamed, making the knee swollen and hot to the touch.
Tuberculosis is a serious disease. Mycobacterium tuberculosis multiplies in bone tissue and causes bone melting, necrosis of cartilage and soft tissues. Without emergency treatment, the knee joints become painful and collapse, and the process involves ever-increasing areas. As a result, fistulas appear - cavities with pus, which leak and can damage the whole organism.
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 dull, bursting, and the tissue itself is swollen, red and blue, you should urgently call an ambulance and perform emergency surgery. Otherwise you can lose a leg or die.
Knee pain - causes of a degenerative nature
After the age of 50, many people suffer from knee pain. Prerequisites are the aging of the body, wear and tear of the articular apparatus and the development of the most common pathology - arthrosis (gonarthrosis). It leads to thinning, destruction of cartilage with a change in the shape of the bone heads. 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 of the leg worries, but it passes quickly. An increase in sensations is possible after physical work, intensive sports, long walks.
In advanced stages, the joint tissues collapse and osteophytes grow on the sides of the joint space. These are spikes of bone tissue that break off in severe cases, causing excruciating pain. There are a number of degenerative pathologies, the symptoms of which are similar to gonarthrosis:
- osteochondropathy. It affects the articular surface of the bone, is associated with trauma, sports. Adolescents can develop for no apparent reason.
- Arthritis. It happens rheumatoid, psoriasis, gout, provokes chronic inflammation and destruction of the joint.
- 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 experience knee pain due to osteoporosis - thinning of the bones that increases their fragility. The disease is accompanied by cramps in the legs, pain in the spine, and periodic fractures.
Other conditions for knee pain
If the knees hurt, the etiology of the sensations can also lie in the defeat of the peripheral nervous system. Thus, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve against the background of damage to the lumbar vertebrae leads to a number of symptoms. A person's knees break, the thigh area hurts, the joints of the limbs weaken, skin sensitivity is disturbed. The leg reflexes also change.
Vascular diseases sometimes cause pain in the entire knee joint. 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 completely stops.
In old age, arteriosclerosis often causes pain in the knees, what should be done in this case? Without the normalization of lipid metabolism, plaque continues to build up in the arteries. The vessels clog, stop feeding the joint to the fullest. 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's knees hurt quite often - how to treat the condition that has arisen can be determined only after the examination. Both sharp and pulling pains in the knee are characteristic of a variety of pathologies, some of which are very dangerous. For diagnosis, you should contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist, traumatologist. He will conduct a survey, find out the exact symptoms of the disease, determine the side effects. Also, at the initial appointment, the doctor will perform a series of tests and physical exams to clarify the nature of the problem.
What to do with knee pain, which instrumental methods help to find the cause? Usually occupied:
- Ultrasonic;
- MRI;
- CT;
- radiography.
The choice of the exact technique must be left to the physician. So, ultrasound reflects well the changes in the leg with arthrosis, damage to the meniscus. X-ray perfectly shows bone deformities, the presence of osteophytes. MRI and CT provide complete information, they are indispensable in complex diseases. In addition, the doctor will prescribe blood tests to exclude inflammation and rheumatism, if necessary, a biopsy of the joint will be performed. With osteoporosis, densitometry is necessary - it shows the density of bone tissue in a patient.
Treatment of knee pain
If the pathology is traumatic in nature, then traumatologists are involved in the treatment, sometimes it is carried out in a hospital. Light bruises will go away on their own within a few days, for a quick regression of the hematoma it is advisable to apply absorbable ointments to the knee. With pain, it is necessary to rub ointments with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory components.
How to treat if the knee hurts with its inflammatory lesion? In the acute stage of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg needs rest, ice compresses can be put on it 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. Physiotherapy and exercise therapy are prescribed to prevent chronic inflammation in the joint after the pain has subsided.
If a person has knee pain due to gonarthrosis, what to do in this case? The main drugs for treatment are chondroprotectors and hyaluronic acid injections. These drugs are designed to restore nutrition to articular cartilage, which stops it from breaking down. Also for the rehabilitation of the knee must be assigned:
- vascular drugs;
- Physical therapy;
- Gymnastics;
- Massage;
- vitamin complexes.
Infectious diseases of the joints are an indication for the introduction of antibiotics into the joint cavities or oral administration of drugs. In some cases, surgery is required to remove the tissue affected by the pus. Even advanced forms of arthrosis with osteophyte growth are treated by surgical intervention. Sometimes just replacing a joint with a prosthesis allows for normal walking ability.