I have seen several patients this past month with knee pain. I start asking questions to learn more and some things appear to be related and would be plausible that this patient’s pain could be coming from their knee, but other questions do not add up. I always ask if they ever have had any back pain or stiffness, Some have said yes and a few have said no. So I explain to the patient that I want to rule the spine as sometimes their pain could be coming from their back. In actuality some research even states that 50% of knee pain comes from the back. You can also get knee pain with issues from the hips. So if you go to other healthcare offices and they go straight to where your pain is located, you may not get better.
So Lets talk about 3 different patients I have seen over the past month. All with the complaint of knee pain. Like I said before, really sitting down and asking good questions, you will find that things do not add up. This particular patient had no back pain, but has had it in the past and did state she was stiff. Like with all my patients I rule out the spine and as I did this, her ROM in her knee go better, her strength got better and she stated her knee pain got better. We only treated the back and showed her how to do some self mobilizations. So we continued down this path and figured out what she was doing throughout the day that was making her symptoms worse and got her back to working out safely and pain free. She was so pleased as she feared she would lose her mobility and not get back to the things she loved to do.
The next patient with the complaint of knee pain also had been to numerous other healthcare providers and was getting better, but could not figure out why she did not have full ROM in her knee with flexion and squatting was still difficult. She also could not get back to her walking routine with friends and this was affecting her quality of life.
She did not have any back pain, but was getting some hip soreness but did not think anything about that. So we ruled out her back and nothing happened. Then we went into her hip. She did not have full ROM in her hip on the side of her knee. So I showed her some self hip mobilizations and her hip ROM improved, her knee ROM went to normal, and she could squat without pain for the first time in 4-5 months. Her last therapist was so focused on her knee that they did not look anywhere else. She got back to walking with her friends and she was so excited to have her life back to normal.
Finally, my third patient this month with knee pain. We again ruled out her back. She was not having any issues with her hip and her ROM was normal. We then went to her knee. This was infact a knee problem. We addressed the things we found in the evaluation. We got her ROM back to normal, worked on her muscle imbalances (and yes the hips are usually weak and need to be address with the imbalances). We got her back to playing with her kids pain free and running.
So the moral of the story is where the pain is located is not often where the source of the pain is coming from. You need to find a physical therapist that can diagnosis the problem and give you education on what you are doing in your daily lives that is creating this problem so you can then get back to what you love to do. A lot of healthcare providers just look at the symptoms and never get to the source. So it becomes frustrating when you just never get better.
Do you have a problem that is Nagging you? Not getting better? Are you looking for a Physical Therapist in Dallas? Call us at 214-538-2559 to have a conversation about it. We would be happy to talk to you and learn what you have tried and what you are wanting to do. We might be able to help.
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