Understanding Your Knee Pain

What is your current age?
Was there a mechanism of injury that created the pain?
Where exactly is the pain located?
Did the pain come on suddenly, or did it come about over time?

Once these important questions are answered, you can start to look further into the symptoms involved. Once your physician puts the symptoms together, along with your personal health history, this should lead to a diagnosis.

Common Knee Symptoms, Can you relate to any of them?

Grinding/Crunching Sensation :

Sometimes bone can grind against bone, once the cartilage in your knee has worn down. This sensation is usually found when people suffer from arthritis. Usually people that areunder 50 years of age, do not have this kind of symptom unless they have had a severe injury in the past.

Popping :

A snapping or popping sound in the knee is quite common, but not all of these sounds are created equally. When the sounds occur, and there is not pain, there is a good chance that there is no problem. The bigger problem is presented when these sounds are associated with knee pain. A snap or popping sound is often both felt and heard when the ACL is torn, for example.

Locking :

A "locking" symptom that happens when a person can not bend or fully straighten their knee. This sensation can be due to the fact that something may be locking the limb. One example of locking may occur when a piece of cartilage wedges within your knee joint. Otherwise, pain can help prevent your knee from moving as well.

Giving-Way / Knee Instability :

The ligaments in your knee help to provide support. When the 4 main ligaments in your knee are torn or perhaps stretched, the knee may feel like it is giving way. Some people describe this as the knee giving out from underneath them.

Swelling :

Many different knee problems can causing swelling. If there is swelling within one hour after the injury, the most common causes of the swelling are an injury to the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) or perhaps a fracture to the tibial plateau (the top of the shin bone).

When the swelling develops over hours or days, for example, the injury is more likely to be a ligament sprain, or a tear to the meniscus. You may also experience swelling in the knee joint when you have arthritis.

Let's look at the location of your knee pain :

When there is pain in the front of your knee, this is most commonly related to the knee cap.

When the pain is located on the inside (medial aspect) of the knee, the pain is usually related to a meniscus tear, or MCL (medial collateral ligament injury), or arthritis of the knee joint.

If the pain is located on the outside (lateral aspect) of the knee joint, there could be a lateral meniscus tear, arthritis, or LCL (lateral collateral ligament) injury. IT band tendonitis can also be a cause for pain on the outside of the knee.

Pain in the back of your knee can be due to a muscle pain, or the formation of a Baker's Cyst.

When a person is walking down steps and the pain occurs, this is an indicator that Chondromalacia may be present. If, however, when you first wake in the morning, and it disipates with some gentle activity, the cause is usually arthritis.

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