Knee pain is a discomfort that can affect your quality of life and make it difficult for you to walk or run. Gain Wellness Center, your trusted chiropractic in Poway services provider, understands the importance of knowing whether there is any swelling or associated pain going further down the leg or if the pain is coming from another area around the knee. So if your knee pain is not resolving and not settling, and is associated with swelling of the knee, then there is something significant happening in the knee joint. Understanding the cause and site of your pain helps your doctor develop a suitable treatment plan specific to your condition.
How Do Chiropractors Diagnose Knee Pain?
There are two tests that your doctor can do to detect the severity of your pain, especially when there is some swelling. Because the two tests detect different amounts of fluid, your doctor may use them in conjunction with one another.
· The first test involves displacing the fluid to the medial side of the knee, pushing it back in from the lateral side, and watching for a bulge to appear immediately, which indicates a joint diffusion. This test can detect small amounts of fluid, as small as three milliliters.
· The second test is the patella tap. This test takes a more significant amount of joint swelling. With this test, your doctor will push the fluid from the super patella pouch into the knee and then gently push down on the patella to feel for a patella tap, which is the tapping sensation that occurs when the patella hits the femur underneath.
If your patella tap is negative, you do have a bit of swelling in your knee based on a positive bulge sign. Your doctor may conduct another test- looking for a flexion contractor or how well your knee straightens out. Even a small degree of flexion contractor is abnormal.
What Are The Two Types Of Knee Pain?
The cause of acute knee pain is often related to something that happens when you are walking or you twist your knee, for example, when playing a sport. It is essential to assess and see what happens, especially if the problem does not go away and continues to bother you after about five or six weeks of rest, ice and physiotherapy.
Chronic knee pain is discomfort that carries on for much longer. It gets to a point where all the things you have done to try and improve it, like taking painkillers and physiotherapy exercises, do not help. In such a case the pain has now got to a point where you need an accurate diagnosis and treatment.
If you have an acute kidney injury, you can consult with physiotherapists to establish what might have caused the knee injury. If it is not a fracture, then it might be a soft tissue injury. Contact a physiotherapist at Gain Wellness Center to get some advice on knee rehabilitation to eliminate pain.
