Causes of knee pain and effective treatment of the disease

Knee pain is one of the most common symptoms with which patients turn to orthopedists and other specialists.Many people completely ignore the appearance of unpleasant sensations, considering them old and almost natural.But there are many reasons for pain in the knee joint, because it has a complex structure and is affected by numerous external and internal harmful factors.Some illnesses are serious and require immediate treatment.

Who is more likely to injure the knee joints?

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 unpleasant symptoms.

Pain in the knee joint occurs especially often in people with flat feet.This is a pathology of the feet that impairs the ability of the limbs to absorb shocks.Over the years, increased loads on the joints cause their destruction and the development of inflammatory phenomena - a pain syndrome appears.Different types of foot and lower leg deformities have similar consequences.

There are numerous factors under the influence of which knee pain occurs more often:

• Excessive weight;
• Passive lifestyle;
• High sports loads;
• diabetes mellitus;
• Vascular diseases;
• Old age;
• Knee operations and injuries;
• Work with increased load on your 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 arthrosis, a severe inflammatory process.Sometimes the symptom becomes permanent, present even at rest, accompanied by swelling, redness of the skin and grinding.All these signs should alert a person and make him see a doctor.

Bruised knee pain

Bruises are the most common traumatic causes of joint dysfunction.Why does my knee hurt if the symptoms were preceded by only a minor bruise?Even a mild injury is accompanied by bleeding into the soft periarticular tissues and their swelling.As a result, the nerve roots suffer and pain appears.

In more severe cases, the pain in the knee intensifies when bending and extending the leg, and the person stops moving due to sharp sensations in the joint.On palpation, you may notice leg swelling;it is hot to the touch.How to treat such an injury?You should consult a traumatologist, take an X-ray, follow all recommendations and rest your leg.

Often the cause of pain in the knee joint after a banal bruise is traumatic hemarthrosis.It is an effusion of blood into the joint cavity, which causes edema and swelling of the synovial membranes.As a result, the joint fills with blood and inflammation begins.Without proper treatment, the injury can result in the development of chronic arthrosis even at a young age.

Other types of knee injuries

If your leg hurts in the knee, and an injury contributed to these feelings, the reasons may be various damages to the components of the joint.Here are the main ones:

• Meniscopathy.It represents the flattening or tearing of the meniscus.Injuries are especially common among professional athletes, people who engage in extreme sports, as well as household injuries.A person feels that the knee is sharply painful, the nature of the sensation is piercing, dagger-like, the joint loses mobility for a while.
• Ligament damage.Rupture (sprain) of 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.
• Rupture of the cruciate ligament.Because these ligaments are located inside the joint, injury often leads to bleeding into the knee cavity.Only a puncture will help pump blood and make an accurate diagnosis.

Painful pain in the knee joint sometimes accompanies chronic dislocations of the patella.Without treatment of the acute injury, in a number of patients the dislocation becomes chronic 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 knee

Often, standard treatment for knee pain is ineffective.In this case, the joint itself may not be affected, but the surrounding soft tissue.Thus, tendonitis, i.e. inflammation of the tendons, can be caused by increased load on the extremities, previous leg injuries, allergies, drug reactions, etc.In this disease, the knee joint hurts, as a rule, during the day or in the evening;pain subsides at night.In the acute phase, joint mobility is severely limited, the syndrome is persistent and cannot be treated with ointments and creams.Sharp sensations are also noted when palpating the lateral part of the knee.

If your knees hurt regularly, the symptoms worsen after hypothermia, the cause may be synovitis - inflammation of the synovial membranes.An inflammatory exudate appears inside the joint, causing cracking and pain.The causes of the pathology are different:

• Autoimmune diseases;
• Metabolic diseases;
• Past traumas;
• Arthrosis.

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 can be observed.If you do not clarify how to treat bursitis in time, it almost always becomes chronic.

Neoplasms in the area of the knee joint

Malignant tumors of this location are rare;the pain syndrome is characteristic for them only at a very late stage.More often, painful pain in the knee joint is characteristic of benign formations:

• Baker's cyst.This tumor occurs below the knee, on its back surface.In appearance, the skin above the cyst is normal, not inflamed;when bent, there may be no swelling at all.In a standing position, a clearly defined, soft, elastic formation appears at the site of the cyst.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 serious limitation of limb mobility.Due to compression of blood vessels and nerves, other symptoms include cold skin, pallor, goosebumps, and numbness.
• Meniscus cyst.It appears in the outer or inner meniscus when a cavity with liquid is localized inside the cartilage.In this case, the knees hurt after heavy loads or at the end of the day.Large cysts can be seen on the side of the joint, small ones are visible only with 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 joint dysfunction.Against the background of this pathology, arthrosis often develops, which causes pain in the knee joint.Reasons: hormonal imbalance, menopause in women.

Infectious joint pathologies

Against the background of infection, the knee joint hurts sharply, sharply, providing rest does not ease the condition.Even urogenital and intestinal infections can cause musculoskeletal complications, resulting in reactive arthritis.Bacteria (salmonella, chlamydia, gonococci and others) penetrate the bone joint cavity through the bloodstream, settle on the tissues and cause inflammation.Tendons also usually become inflamed, causing the knee to become swollen and hot 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 emergency help, the knee joints hurt and collapse, and the process affects larger and larger surfaces.As a result, fistulas appear - cavities with pus, which can spill out and damage the whole 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 an elevated temperature of up to 40 degrees?If the pain in the knee is dull, throbbing, and the tissues themselves are swollen, red and blue, you should urgently call an ambulance and go to emergency surgery.Otherwise, you may lose your 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 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 the pathology, the knee hurts on one side;after several years, the lesion becomes bilateral.Stiffness in my leg bothers me in the morning, but it goes away quickly.Increased feelings are possible after physical work, intense sports or long walking.

In advanced stages, joint tissues collapse, and osteophytes grow on the sides of the joint space.These are spines 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 gonarthrosis:

• Osteochondropathy.It 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, gouty 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, spine pain and periodic fractures.

Other causes of knee pain

When your knees hurt, the etiology of the feeling can also be in damage to the peripheral nervous system.Thus, neuropathy of the sciatic nerve on the background of damage to the lumbar vertebrae leads to a series of symptoms.The person's knees hurt, the hip area hurts, the joints of the limbs are weak, the sensitivity of the skin is weakened.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 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 normalizing fat metabolism, plaque will continue to build up inside the arteries.The vessels become blocked and stop supplying the joint completely.Arthrosis 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 to diagnose?

People often have pain in their knees;how to treat the condition can only be determined after an examination.Both sharp and excruciating pain in the knee is characteristic of many pathologies, some of them are very dangerous.For a diagnosis, you should contact a surgeon, orthopedist, neurologist, rheumatologist or traumatologist.He will conduct a survey, find out the exact symptoms of the disease and identify accompanying signs.Also, at the first visit, 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 to discover the cause?It is usually prescribed:

• Ultrasound;
• MRI;
• CT;
• Radiography.

The choice of the exact technique should be left to the doctor.Therefore, ultrasound reflects well the changes in the leg due to arthrosis and damage to the meniscus.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, a joint biopsy will be performed.Osteoporosis requires densitometry - it will show the patient's bone density.

Treatment of knee pain

If the pathology is of a traumatic nature, the treatment is carried out by traumatologists, sometimes in a hospital.Light bruising disappears on its own within a few days;in order to resolve the hematoma quickly, it is advisable to apply absorbable ointments to the knee.If pain appears, ointments with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory components should be rubbed.

How to treat when the knee hurts due to an inflammatory lesion?In the acute phase of bursitis, synovitis, arthritis, the affected leg requires rest;ice packs can be applied for 15 minutes during the first 3 days.Severe pain is relieved by injections of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and anesthetic injections directly into the joint.In order to prevent chronic inflammation in the joint after the pain has stopped, physiotherapy and exercise therapy are prescribed.

When a person has knee pain due to gonarthrosis, what should he do in this case?The main drugs for treatment are chondroprotectors and hyaluronic acid injections.These drugs are intended to restore nutrition to the articular cartilage, which is why it stops deteriorating.Also, the following must be prescribed for knee rehabilitation:

• Vascular drugs;
• physiotherapy;
• gymnastics;
• Massage;
• Vitamin complexes.

Infectious diseases of the joints are an indication for introducing antibiotics into the joint cavities or taking drugs orally.In some cases, it is necessary to perform an operation to remove the tissue affected by the pus.Advanced forms of arthrosis with osteophyte proliferation are also treated with surgery.Sometimes only joint replacement with a prosthesis allows a person to retain the ability to walk normally.