You need urgent medical attention if: Your knee joint is bent or deformed. There was a "popping" sound at the time of injury. Your knee can't bear weight.
Make a medical appointment
Or if your knee joint is: Badly swollen. Red. Warm and tender.
Full tears of the ACL and MCL are serious and can affect future movement. If the MCL or ACL tears, the result is usually pain, swelling, stiffness, and instability. In most cases, the injured person can still walk with the torn knee ligament. But the movement will be severely limited, not to mention painful.
If the injury is a torn ACL, a small blood vessel is also torn—and when that happens, the swelling can also be significant. “If your knee looks like a grapefruit, you should get it checked out,” Allen says.
The short answer is yes. After the pain and swelling subsides and if there is no other injury to your knee, you may be able to walk in straight lines, go up and down stairs and even potentially jog in a straight line. The ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) is an important ligament that provides stability to the knee.
A torn meniscus usually produces well-localized pain in the knee. The pain often is worse during twisting or squatting motions. Unless the torn meniscus has locked the knee, many people with a torn meniscus can walk, stand, sit, and sleep without pain.
Immediately after you tear your ACL, it may swell so much that you won't be able to bend it. Once the swelling subsides, you may be able to bend your knee, but it will be weaker, less stable, and may be painful.
1. You aren't moving enough. One of the biggest mistakes we see patients with knee pain make is to begin using their knees less.
You can usually treat knee pain at home with the RICE method: Rest: Stop the physical activity that caused the pain to avoid making the injury worse. Ice: Apply an ice pack or cold compress for 15 to 20 minutes every hour for the first day after your injury. After one day, you can apply ice every three to four hours.
You should consider going to the ER if you can't put weight on your knee, feel sick, or have a fever, or if your knee is red and hot. You may have a fracture or infection. Other symptoms that demand emergency evaluation: Unbearable pain.
Your knee buckles, clicks, or locks. Your knee is deformed or misshapen. You cannot flex your knee or have trouble straightening it all the way out. You have a fever, redness or warmth around the knee, or a lot of swelling.
What happens if you leave a torn meniscus untreated? Untreated tears can progress and become worse over time. Progressive meniscus loss can increase the risk that a person will develop degenerative knee arthritis. It is important to get a diagnosis and seek treatment early.
Common extra-articular pathologies that can mimic lateral meniscal tears include iliotibial band syndrome, proximal tibiofibular joint instability, snapping biceps femoris or popliteus tendons, and peroneal nerve compression syndrome or neuritis.
Normally, braces are used to stabilize a joint. Since menisci are not crucial for knee stability, you might not need a brace to help your injury heal. However, if there is damage to the surrounding ligaments as well, a brace may be necessary because ligaments are important for joint stability.
Core Tip: Traditionally, the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), medial collateral ligament (MCL), and medial meniscus (MM) were thought to be the unhappy triad of the knee; however, lateral meniscus injuries are thought to be more common in association with ACL and MCL tears.
Stage 4, or “severe” OA, involves extensive damage to the cartilage and changes in the bone that can greatly affect mobility and quality of life. The symptoms at stage 4 are persistent and severe, and surgery may be necessary.
In a typical moderate tear, you feel pain at the side or in the center of the knee, depending on where the tear is. Often, you are still able to walk. Swelling usually increases slowly over a few days and may make the knee feel stiff and limit bending. There is often sharp pain when you twist or squat.
The most noticeable MCL tear symptom is pain on the inside of your knee directly over the ligament. You may also hear and feel a “popping” sensation in your knee at the time of injury. Other common symptoms include bruising, knee instability, swelling, and the inability to hold your weight.
After you damage your ACL, it's very likely that you won't be able to bend and flex your knee like you normally would.