What Is Causing Your Knee Pain?

Knee pain or knee injuries are widespread, and there are many causes. It is crucial to make an accurate diagnosis of the cause from a thorough assessment. You should direct appropriate treatment at the origin. Knee pain can arise from soft tissue injuries (e.g. ligament sprains and muscle strains), bone conditions (e.g. osteoarthritis, Osgood Schlatters Disease) and biomechanical dysfunction (e.g. Patellofemoral syndrome). Your sciatic nerve can even refer to your knee.

Knee pain has many causes, and treatment varies considerably depending on the diagnosis. Treatment may involve simple knee mobilisation techniques, massage, taping, stretches or strengthening exercises. Thorough rehabilitation protocols post-knee reconstruction or knee replacement surgeries provide excellent outcomes.

How Do You Know If Your Knee Injury Is Serious?

While it is always best to seek the professional advice of a highly skilled practitioner trained in knee injuries such as your doctor or physiotherapist, here are seven signs that could indicate a severe knee injury.

1. Obvious deformity. You may have a fracture or dislocation.
2. You heard a “pop” or “snap”.
3. You’ve experienced swelling
4. Greater than normal movement
5. Less than usual movement, e.g. can’t straighten
6. You are unable to weight-bear on your leg
7. Your knee “gives way” or “buckles”.

What is the Best Exercise for Knee Pain?

It may seem a little contradictory, but researchers have identified that knee exercises may assist the relief of your knee pain. The vital thing to determine is which knee exercises are likely to help you and which could be harmful.

What exercise dosage you should be doing is also important. Your exercise dosage will vary depending upon your specific diagnosis, the phase of injury and other individual health factors. Your physiotherapist’s professional training will guide you quickly back to pain-free knees.

While we’d like to say that all knee exercises are beneficial to you, there are significant individual differences between all patients who present with knee pain. For example, an older diabetic, or overweight patient will require a very different set of knee exercises to a young high-performance athlete, or a patient who has just had knee surgery.

Based on the significant individual differences between patients who present with knee pain, your knee treatment can differ from someone else with a similar issue. Seek the professional advice of your trusted physiotherapist or healthcare practitioner who has a particular interest in knee pain and injuries to guide your knee rehabilitation.