Your painful knee - due to knee injury or something else?

When a your girl gets dislocated knee cap, there is no actual injury, but the onset is very sudden, indicating mechanical derangement rather than the onset of inflammation.

Most times a blow to the leg or a twist on the knee is involved, and the pain started right then.

It is largely true that in the absence of a definite injury history, knee pain will not be coming from the knee itself.
This is often true even when an X-ray shows osteoarthritis of the knee.

Knee swelling after injury

It is very useful to know how long after the injury it first swelled up.

Swelling within one hour suggests bleeding into the joint cavity, due to such things as cruciate tear or ostechondral fracture of a femoral condyle.

Swelling appearing later is an effusion into the joint, due to less severe injuries.

Someone asked about the pros and cons of draining fluid from the knee.

I use this frequently, to help diagnose and help treat knee conditions.
A little local anaesthetic into the skin and deeper, makes it a pretty painless procedure.
Very careful antiseptic technique is needed, but I've never caused an infection.

The information obtained can be very valuable. Osteochondral fractures can easily be missed on initial x-rays, and only be suspected by finding frank blood in the joint.

Large effusions are very uncomfortable, and also inhibit the quadriceps muscle. Removing most of the fluid, can speed up recovery dramatically.

"Diseases" that are really injuries and vice versa

Quadriceps tears in elderly people, are due to weakened tissues just above the knee cap, giving way with little provocation.

Fuzzy semantics besides, it is always worth considering both contributions, of injury and tissue integrity. Unhealthy tissues are more prone to injury.

I often find zinc deficiency contributes to someone hurting themselves.

This consideration applies to apparently healthy people of all ages, and to super fit elite athletes as well. Poor nutrition weakens tissues.

From knee injury page back to start of knee pages

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