Knee Injuries Treatment Flashcards
Treatment Starts with a Diagnosis
Even if you feel your knee pain is mild, seek medical attention to get a diagnosis. If your knee heals properly, you prevent future problems. Like ankle injuries, if your knee injury heals poorly, you may face a lifetime of pain. Your diagnosis may be:
ACL sprain or tear
PCL sprain or tear
MCL sprain or tear
LCL sprain or tear
Meniscus tear
Arthritis —either rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis
Tendinopathy or tendonitis, such as hamstring tendinopathy or biceps femoris insertional tendinopathy
Patellofemoral syndrome
Chondromalacia
Pes anserine bursitis
Baker’s cyst, which happens when a fluid-filled bubble forms in your knee joint
Best-in-Class Solution to Knee Injuries
The traditional treatment has been arthroscopic knee surgery or total knee replacement, which involves pain management, physiotherapy, supportive sports like swimming and dietary changes. Knee surgery carries risks and is expensive. Additionally, it produces average success rates, long-term complications like osteoarthritis and long recovery times.
Regenerative therapy has been proven as a safe, effective way to address knee pain and damage. Stem cell therapy allows your body to heal naturally by injecting your own stem cells — taken from your bone marrow — into your knee, where they transform into the kind of cells you need: bone, ligament, cartilage or soft tissue. The technology has progressed and become increasingly popular and mainstream, so that now you can consider stem cell therapy instead of total knee replacement.
Stem Cells and Knee Injury
Stem cells are injected into your knee at the source of your pain. There, they differentiate into the required cells to repair the damage. Stem cells encourage new cell growth and fight inflammation. Much of the research done by the Mayo Clinic and the Center for Regenerative Medicine has shown that stem cell therapy has a positive effect on degenerative joint diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.
The Mayo Clinic concluded that stem cell therapy is a safe option for improving not only your injured knee, but the opposite one as well. Instead of inserting metal joints, stem cell therapy lets you keep your own bones and tissue, healing your body naturally.
The Anatomy of Your Knees
Although you may have heard a lot about an anterior cruciate ligament or ACL sprain or tear, your knees have three other ligaments:
Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL)
Medial collateral ligament (MCL)
Lateral cruciate ligament (LCL)
These four ligaments help stabilize each knee joint along with your medial and lateral menisci. The menisci are rubbery fibrocartilage in between the joints; if you tear one, it’s called a meniscus tear. Any number of twisting motions or strains can injure this infrastructure.
Types of Knee Injuries
Since your knees have so many moving parts, injury or disease that affects any one of them causes a loss of functionality. Whether it occurs in the form of trauma, disease, or age-related degeneration, knee injuries and ailments are painful. The most common problems associated with the knee pain involve ligaments or cartilage.
In addition to injuries like a meniscus tear, a PCL sprain or tear, and hamstring tendinopathy, a vast number of people suffer from joint disease or the pain from normal wear and tear that comes with age. These conditions include organic diseases like arthritis, patellofemoral syndrome, bursitis and Baker’s cyst.
Who Suffers Knee Problems?
Younger people, especially athletes, more often suffer blunt trauma injuries. Active people hurt their knees due to overuse or inadequate protection. These injuries include patellar tendonitis, patellofemoral syndrome, hamstrings tendinopathy and biceps femoris insertional tendinopathy. Blunt force trauma can lead to knee instability, which causes other problems if not treated.
Older people suffer most from joint disease. Whether caused by normal wear and tear or a particular disease, joint ailments happen when the joint loses its cushiony parts, the jell-like material that makes it possible for it to move fluidly without friction and leads to pain and loss of motion.
Painful Symptoms
The hallmark symptom of most knee injuries is pain, which can be mild to severe. Other symptoms that accompany the pain include:
Bruising Swelling Stiffness Loss of flexibility Instability of the joint You may even feel your knee buckling underneath your weight. If you aggravate the symptoms when you walk, run, climb stairs or stand for extended periods of time, it’s time to visit your NYC doctor or a top New York stem cell therapy specialist for an examination that may include X-rays or an MRI.
