If you are even moderately physically active, then you must have, at some point in your life, experienced knee joint pain. If the discomfort doesn't go away in a few days of routine home care and relaxation, do you have to go and seek professional medical advice? Here is when it is best to see a doctor:
If, as a consequence of injury, your knee has swollen up virtually immediately;
if it looks as if the bones are deformed;
in the event you can no longer bear weight (i.e., get up comfortably);
when you've got insufferable ache;
if you happen to have lost sensation below the injury site;
if the foot and ankle have turned cold;
or in case your knee area is red and warm and there's an accompanying fever along with the injury.
Normally, knee joint pain can be resolved at home by rest, applying ice, compression, and elevation (RICE). If different symptoms, such as recurrent ache and swelling, persist, then medical care is probably in order.
How Knee Injuries Are Diagnosed
Should you decide to seek medical help, you will first be given questions to complete a medical history. Naturally, the physician will wish to know the main points concerning the injury, such as when, where, how it happened, to find out what structures in the knee are perhaps damaged. If the injury is due to a direct blow, then a fracture or contusion (bruise) might be the issue. If it was a twisting injury, then a cartilage or meniscus tear could be the reason for the pain. What else might have placed stress on the knee and to potentially trigger a tear in the ligament?
Be ready to answer other inquiries to further assist with the diagnosis. For example, was swelling present, and did it happen instantly or did you first notice it hours later? Were you able to stand and walk immediately after the damage? Is there discomfort in different areas, such as the ankle or hip? Does it damage especially bad when going up or down steps?
The physician will then examine the knee, first to make certain every part is where it belongs. If the kneecap is fractured or the patellar tendon is injured, the kneecap can slide out of position. The physician can easily check to see if the kneecap is sliding to the outside or lateral part of the knee; if that is the case, then the patellar tendon is dislocated. If the knee is held slightly flexed, then there may be fluid within the joint space, since joint space is maximal at 15 degrees of flexion.
Feeling the knee, referred to as palpation, comes next. The physician can correlate the particular location of the ache to the underlying structures like ligaments or muscle-insertion points. Palpation over the space between the bones within the front part of the knee, often called the joint line, could be associated to fluid or tenderness resulting from a meniscus injury. The doctor might examine the uninjured knee to the injured one by exerting stress on the unhurt knee to see how loose or tight the normal ligaments are.
X-rays of the knee may be advisable to make certain there are not any broken bones, but if no direct blow to the area has precipitated the knee joint ache, then plain X-rays or imaging of the knee via an MRI might wait till another time.
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