Any pain and discomfort that haunts for a long time needs to be clarified. If the leg behind the knee hurts for a long time, it is necessary to consult a doctor, since the true causes of the problem can be much more serious than it seems at first glance. Most people who have this disorder continue to lead an active lifestyle and try not to pay attention to the symptom, justifying it with fatigue or physical activity.
Depending on what exactly provokes the pain syndrome, appropriate treatment is prescribed. Since the structure of the knee joint is considered by doctors as one of the most complex in the human body, it is with it that problems most often arise. It is difficult to immediately answer the question of why the legs behind the knees hurt, but, based on medical practice, in 30% of cases, doctors have to deal with a violation of the musculoskeletal system of this particular organ.
What is a Baker cyst
It may be one of the reasons why the legs under the knees hurt from behind. With this disease, a fluid benign tumor develops in the popliteal region. Pain and discomfort when walking, running, squats occurs when synovial fluid flows out of it.
The size of the cyst can be different, but the larger it is, the more the leg behind the knee will hurt. This pathology is diagnosed in early childhood, as well as in adults older than 40-45 years. Baker's cyst is an ailment that affects the knee joints of every second elderly person, combined with arthritis of the knee. In the absence of treatment, degenerative processes develop in the joint.
Various factors can provoke a benign tumor of the knee . The most common of these is meniscus damage in the background:
- arthrosis and rheumatoid arthritis;
- chronic synovitis;
- osteoarthritis and osteoarthritis.
If a child under seven years of age has a leg sore when the knee is extensible at the back for no apparent reason, Baker’s cyst is most likely to occur. More precisely, the results of the examination, which is recommended to undergo, will tell.
Symptoms and treatment
At first, the presence of a cyst may not be felt at all, therefore, in most cases, the disease is asymptomatic or manifested by weak unpleasant sensations. The first unsharp and mild pain usually appears at an early stage of the disease when probing the joint.
As it grows, the formation begins to squeeze the tissue under the knee, which causes a pain in the leg at the fold behind the knee. A person with this disease is no longer able to walk normally, so lameness appears. Without proper treatment, discomfort becomes stronger, the gait changes, long walks become difficult.
To diagnose Baker's cyst, the patient is prescribed MRI and ultrasound of the knee. Sometimes the disease affects both the right and left joints. The most common treatment method is a surgical puncture of the cyst followed by the outflow of synovial fluid. In more complicated cases, surgery may be required. During the intervention, a small incision is made under the cystic tumor, with the help of which the channel through which the joint fluid flows is stitched and bandaged. After this manipulation, the cyst is removed.
Complications after surgery arise quite often, so surgical intervention is an extreme option in the treatment of Baker's cysts. Another disadvantage of radical treatment is the very long recovery period.
Meniscus cysts as a cause of pain under the knee
This pathology is suspected if the patient has a sore leg behind the knee during flexion. Like Baker's cyst, this formation is a cavity filled with articular fluid. The tumor is located inside the meniscus. At risk of the disease are all people of active working age. The main reason for the development of the disease are considered knee injuries. Often, the meniscus cyst passes on its own, without any intervention.
Symptoms are significantly different from the clinical manifestations of a previous pathology. At first, patients notice pain exclusively inside the knee. If therapy is not started, then the discomfort begins to migrate higher and lower throughout the limb. Legs behind the knees and calves are especially sore during any flexion-extensor movements.
Radical operations to remove meniscus cysts are not performed. If the cystic formation is not significant, the patient is recommended to reduce the load on the sore knee and drink several days from the NSAID group. Otherwise, when the tumor reaches a large size, an endoscopic intervention is performed during which the meniscus is removed.
Meniscus tear and sprain
Acute pain occurs in a person directly during an injury. Pathology has a clear localization inside the knee, and after some time it moves lower. A leg below the knee, behind, can hurt to varying degrees of intensity. Damage to the meniscus in the predominant number of cases is caused by trauma, therefore it occurs in persons leading an active lifestyle and playing sports.
In the first days after damage, the uncomfortable sensations do not have a specific location. It may seem to the patient that his leg hurts below the knee in the back in the calf or inside the joint, as well as in the patella. After a few days, discomfort will only be felt under the knee. Soreness is especially pronounced at the time of sharp bending and extension of the leg. For a patient with a meniscus rupture, even calm walking and moderate physical activity become difficult.
Without treatment, the development of the inflammatory process is possible. Most often, surgeons prefer the “classic” version of the treatment of the knee joint, in which the patient is punctured by extracting the accumulated fluid through a puncture, and Novocaine solution is administered. The treatment does not end there: the patient is prescribed a course of physiotherapy and physiotherapy.
With serious damage to the meniscus, surgery is indicated. Surgical procedure becomes the only treatment option even if conservative therapy has not brought the expected effect. During the operation, the damaged meniscus is completely or partially removed to the patient. If the injury is not so serious, the doctor may decide to restore the meniscus. After surgery, the leg will hurt behind the knee for several months.
Knee Ligament Tendonitis
Inflammation develops under the influence of several factors. Tendonitis causes acute pain in the limb from the back. With this disease, the patient's motor activity is limited, so he has to consult doctors. Most often, people complain that the right leg under the knee is sore behind: the focus of inflammation is clearly localized there, therefore, tendonitis of the knee ligaments is usually impossible to confuse with other joint pathologies.
Pain is the main sign of pathology. The syndrome is clearly felt behind the knees. Why legs hurt with tendinitis, you can understand by reading the features of the pathophysiology of this disease. Inflammation itself occurs in the popliteal fossa, but does not extend to neighboring areas. With tendonitis, knee mobility suddenly decreases. After a simple foot movement, the pain intensifies and does not subside for a long time. Without treatment, the risk of more severe inflammation increases, in which new symptoms are added: redness visible to the naked eye and swelling of the knee.
Among the causes of the development of the inflammatory process, the main ones are:
- Physical overload of the knee. It is no coincidence that athletes, adolescents, and dancers suffer from tendonitis. Intensive training provides an excessive load on the limbs, resulting in microtrauma and inflammation.
- Bruises, dislocations, and other mechanical damage caused by improper or too abrupt movement can cause tendonitis. In the absence of timely therapy, the disease can affect muscle tissue, which only exacerbates its course.
- Joint infection Most often, infection occurs as a result of poor-quality treatment of open damage to the knee joint. As soon as the wound heals, growing pain appears under the knee. Sometimes tendonitis leads to a purulent abscess.
Much less often, the disease appears against the background of metabolic disorders, malfunctions of the endocrine system, and diabetes mellitus. However, regardless of the cause, tendonitis is always accompanied by characteristic symptoms: patients have pain in the legs under the back knees.
How to treat inflamed ligaments? After relieving acute pain, it is recommended that patients undergo physiotherapeutic procedures and a course of exercise therapy aimed at restoring damaged ligaments. Once the disease is cured, it is possible that the pain will still persist for a certain time, but normally after a couple of months it should completely subside. To combat pain, anesthetics can be prescribed to the patient, which are sold without a prescription (Analgin, Diclofenac, Dollaren, Nemisil, Ibuprofen, Ketanov). In most cases, such drugs are enough.
Domestic and sports injuries
Surgeons are most likely to encounter this problem. The thing is that the knee joint takes on a huge load, which therefore has a greater risk of damage. In sports and domestic injuries, the leg usually hurts behind, above the knee. The main injuries that cause discomfort are sprains and bruises of the popliteal fossa. Patients often get such injuries when they fail to fall.
As a rule, victims immediately experience acute pain, which becomes the reason for the impaired mobility of the knee joint. In some cases this does not happen. In addition, the pain can deceitfully disappear for several hours and appear again.
Immediately after the incident, it is necessary to seat the victim and apply cold to the knee, and to ensure the limb itself. Then the diseased joint is fixed with an elastic bandage. The patient is prescribed local anti-inflammatory drugs. In many cases, trauma to the knee joint leads to the formation of a cystic type hematoma. In this situation, you must definitely see a doctor. Most often, the disease needs a puncture, after which relief comes immediately.
Rupture of the knee ligaments
Another damage that most often happens to the right leg. The knee hurts in the back when the ligaments are torn, but the intensity of the pain will depend on whether a partial or complete tear has occurred. Numbness and swelling of the calf muscle is characteristic of this injury. The cause of rupture of the knee ligaments can be:
- strong mechanical knee punch;
- falling from a height to a limb bent at the knee joint;
- tucking of the lower leg;
- high jump;
- too sharp rotation of the body around the axis with static stability of the ankle and lower leg.
After the examination, the surgeon will prescribe the appropriate treatment for the injured leg. If there is a partial tear, for the first time the patient is prescribed analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs from the non-hormonal group. However, with a complete break, the patient will need an urgent operation. He is hospitalized in the Department of Traumatology, providing strict bed rest and immobilization of the injured limb. In addition to painkillers and NSAIDs, physiotherapeutic procedures are prescribed.
Can a knee hurt due to vascular problems
One of the reasons the left leg hurts behind the knee is thrombosis of the vein located under the joint. With this disease, blood flow is disturbed. Partial or complete closure of the venous lumen carries a serious danger not only to health but also to the patient's life. If urgent measures are not taken in time, the blood clot that clogged the vessel will entail irreversible necrotic changes in the tissues of the limb. The most tragic outcome may be pulmonary thromboembolism, which in 99% of cases develops with lightning speed and leads to death.
The main causes of thrombosis are the following factors:
- prolonged fixation of the limb in an irremovable position;
- squeezing vessels with a tumor of soft tissues located near the knee;
- phlebeurysm;
- severe bruising of the popliteal fossa or the vein itself;
- continuous use of oral contraceptives with hormones for several years;
- increased blood viscosity;
- third degree of obesity;
- vasculitis;
- damage to limb tissues by infection against diabetes mellitus;
- age over 70 years.
With the formation of a thrombus of a small size, the patient may not feel any symptoms. Otherwise, if the clot completely covers the lumen of the popliteal vein, the patient’s leg suddenly begins to hurt from behind, above the knee or below. The accompanying symptoms in this situation are:
- visually noticeable venous pattern under the patella due to excessive filling of blood vessels and obstacles for full circulation in this area of ​​the limb;
- sudden decrease in knee motor activity due to increased pain and swelling;
- the natural gloss of the skin, their redness, quickly turning into cyanosis.
It is impossible to prescribe treatment for yourself, since only a specialist can assess the severity of the condition. All you need to do is call an ambulance and clearly tell the dispatcher about the symptoms of thrombosis.
With partial blockage of the knee vein, conservative treatment methods are used to thin the blood in the area of ​​localization of the thrombus and its dissolution. In some cases, it is recommended to apply painkillers for external use (gels, ointments, creams), which will help relieve pain before the ambulance arrives. With multiple thrombosis, an urgent operation is performed, the essence of which is to restore the patency of the clogged vessel and proper blood circulation.
Pinched nerve under the knee
This problem is known to doctors despite the fact that it can hardly be called a common provoking factor. If a leg in the knee is sore behind, it is most likely that there was damage to the tissues in the joint area, which led to a pinched nerve. Soreness in the limb can be observed over a long period, periodically exacerbating and calming down.
In addition to mechanical damage to the leg, pinching can occur due to excessive body weight. Due to obesity, excessive pressure is exerted on the knee joint, which contributes to the violation of the anatomically correct position of the bones relative to each other.
Favorable conditions for pinching the nerve root under the knee can serve as:
- uncomfortable position of the leg during a long flight, a trip on the bus;
- benign or malignant bone growths in the articular cavity;
- arthritis and arthrosis of the knee;
- heavy physical exertion, athletic training, during which the knee bends in monotonous rhythmic actions;
- pregnancy;
- intrauterine malformations of the knee joint.
Whatever the cause of this problem, the symptoms will be identical in all cases. The clamping of the nerve ending between the bones in the knee joint is indicated by:
- sudden numbness of the limb below the knee;
- tingling along the entire leg;
- weakness, feeling of a "cotton" limb;
- the leg under the knee in the back is very sore.
How to treat acute burning pain caused by a pinched nerve? Indeed, sometimes the patient can not even stand on his feet due to a pinched nerve process. How to help yourself in this case?
What to do when pinched a nerve?
The decision on the tactics of treating legs with knee pain is made by the attending physician. When a nerve is pinched, the patient is prescribed anesthetic blockade of the knee with Lidocaine or Novocaine. Only after it is possible to eliminate the expressed pain syndrome, the patient is prescribed medications, the action of which is aimed at eliminating the effects of pinching. With this problem, patients are prescribed medications of the following groups:
- non-steroidal anti-inflammatory;
- painkillers;
- antispasmodic;
- improving blood circulation;
- restorative shells of nerve endings.
If conservative therapy was ineffective and after 3-4 weeks no improvement is observed, another option is considered - surgical intervention.
As you can see, there can be many causes of pain under the knees. Only a qualified trauma surgeon can accurately determine what triggered the violation.