Best Way To Know If You Have A Torn Meniscus

[Music] hi welcome to another episode of talking with docs i'm dr brad weineman and i'm dr paul zalza paul in today's episode we have a really good video it's going to help people determine whether or not they have a tormeniscus so it's the top five ways to know if you have a tour meniscus what's a meniscus meniscus is a funny word that talks about a piece of soft tissue a piece of cartilage that lives between your femur your thigh bone and your shin bone there's one on the inside on the outside it acts like a little shock absorber between the key part of your knee and often gets damaged okay so a meniscal tear meniscal tear two meniscus is a menis or meniscus in the sky yes okay a lot in there usually you throw a little bit of latin in like i like to go to the latin never took latin nevermind i did actually take london it was actually hard i think i got a very okay mark in university um okay so number one for me is pain pain pain in the knee specifically along the joint line so right in that area between the thigh bone and shin bone where it bends on the flat part pain what's it more common on the inside or the outside i'd say ten to one inside medial meniscus yes tear pain at the joint line on the inside yeah and sometimes it can be a little bit more to the back i'd say typically more to the back than to the front but often right along the middle so number one pain pain okay i would say the number two uh thing that you'll notice if you have a meniscal tear are is mechanical symptom so we talk about this in a lot of our videos what do you mean by that i i mean some sort of clunking catching locking giving way with the meniscal tear we often talk about a locked knee which means your knee is locked and you can't extend it fully yes because the meniscal tear is flipped in upon itself and you just can't extend your knee so you can't get it all the way straight yeah okay can't get it straight that's a mechanical symptom so mechanical symptoms i think are an indication that you may have a meniscal tear okay number three for me would be pain with with one of two motions either planting and twisting activity or deep knee bending so pain that's aggravated by those specific activities because what happens is your thought is kind of digging in on that piece that's torn either when you twist or when you bend yeah there is some studies out there that show that deep knee bend if it hurts on the inside of your knee when you're going to do a deep knee bend that's a good indication that you may have a meniscal tear and often pain i'll say to patients so does it hurt when you've done that oh i can't tell many i can't i can't squat down like that i can't play back catcher anymore yeah that's it back catching days are over yes okay number four number four is i would say some history of trauma okay you hurt yourself you're playing soccer you planted and twisted and then you had sudden pain on the inside or you're jogging and you stepped in a pothole some kind of trauma that tore your meniscus right so when you hurt your knee um could you only hurt the meniscus when you hurt your knee is that like the only thing that can happen yep okay no you can hurt a lot of things okay tearing acl you can sprain your mcl yes and disgrace your patella okay like you could even rupture your quadricep mechanism if you were so unlucky patel yeah a quadricep mechanism yes so the patellar tendon as well so i would agree with you so yes so on the list is a history of trauma to the knee it could be a term meniscus it's a sensitive sign but not specific because it could mean a number of things but right and you could have more than one thing as well why not so your number four history of trauma history trauma okay so my number five is a history of no trauma you can't do that dude yeah that erases my history of trauma if you say history of no trauma i'm just saying so some people have pain in their knee and they have no trauma when i hear that i'm like you know what this person might have a torn meniscus okay why does that happen people say to me that all the time why did i get this i guess yeah you're right what is the answer like why did they get it you could have a degenerative tear of the meniscus where it's just with time got a little bit of wear and tear and then there's a degenerative tear of the meniscus or another reason is you don't remember the trauma that did it yes okay yeah it takes me back to four my history that's your trauma always kind of and some people yeah they'll they'll wake up in the morning i'll be like you could have rolled over weird in the middle of the night yeah but i usually look at them with a smile on my face they say it's middle-aged just welcome to to middle age that's it middle age okay so that gives a nice a nice summary so our top five for ways that you know you might have a torn meniscus number one's pain number two is mechanical type symptoms catching locking giving way number three is the painful test of planting and twisting or deep knee bending if that exhibits it you might have a torn meniscus and number four is you absolutely have to have a history of trauma and number five is that you absolutely have no trauma agree to disagree agree agree to disagree so it's kind of like a top three plus a couple that yeah i guess uh it's one step forward two step back kind of thing that's right right so we hope this helps you determine whether or not you have a tour meniscus ultimately if you're worried about this what you do take two aspirins and call me in the morning don't please don't call me no go get it checked out okay check that out the diagnosis is made with uh ultimately our test that we do is uh so i would usually say a physical mind is mostly physical example yes it's confirmed by the mri history physical exam and which everyone comes in and says do i need mri and you're like i think actually this time you might actually need it right not everyone needs an mri but in this case you can so any questions please leave a comment down below please tell us about your knee injuries tell us about your torn meniscus because it is very very common we see a lot of people with this problem tell us if you have trauma or no trauma yes we can take a poll and see how many people were a traumatic um if you liked this video please like it subscribe to our channel and remember you are in charge of your own health we'll see you next time

Channel: Talking With Docs

Views: 79,664

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Id: S7-LofTBmbM

Length: 5min 56sec (356 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020