twisted knee - whats the damage

[ashhad]

Sorry to put you through the full story but I want to give as much detail as possible so I can get a good opinion on this.

About four months ago I twisted my left knee during a 5-a-side football game. The pain was quite sever and it took me a few minutes to get to my feet and get off the pitch. I went to see my doc the next day and he did some bending and stretching of my leg and prescribed me anti inflamatory and rest.

After 6 weeks of rest from any sport i went back to the gym and started some fitness training. I just used the treadmill, bike and x-trainer at light to medium intensity. All this went quite well with no problems.

About 3 weeks ago i played a couple of 7-a-side games with no issues with the kness. UNFORTUNATELY 5 minutes in to yesterdays the same knee twisted again in the same way although the pain was a lot less this time but still left me on the floor for a couple of minutes.

There is some swelling today and I have pain down the insde of my leg along the knee and at the back of my leg along the knee too.

I want to know a few things.

1. Have I done permanent damage to something in the knee.
2. Are there any particular exercises I can do to strengthen my knees
3. Any other advice you can give me.

Really appreciate the help.

Thank you,

Ashhad.

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[gcoe]

Hi Ashad

from your description it would be impossible to know what you have injured. These are the most likely injuries

1. you may have torn one of the collateral ligaments. These are the fibrous bands that bind your thigh bone to your shin bone on each side of the joint. Is the pain on the inside or the outside? this may indicate which one
2. You may have torn one of the cruciate ligaments There are two of these cords of fibrous material that lie deep inside the knee joint. The stop the two bones gliding and rotating too much while allowing the normal movements to occur. The Anterior Cruciate Ligament is the most common injury.
If you tore one of your ligaments initially this may mean your knee joint now has too much slippage in the joint and has become a bit unstable - therefore prone to reinjury
3.You may have torn one of the menisci - the crescent moon shaped cartilages the sit in your knee joint and improve the mechanics of the joint. a torn medial meniscus goes hand in hand with a torn medial collateral ligament.

However you could have done something else. While I could ask you a whole lot of questions to try to narrow down the problem what you really need to do is get your knee properly checked out by a sports or Musculoskeletal phyiso. At this stage you should probably have an MRI done (or some other relevant image technique) to have a look what is torn.