How to know if you have a serious knee injury

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If you suffer a knee injury, what do you do about it? Should you be concerned? On one hand, you could give it a few days to see if it gets better on its own. How can you know if you risk making the problem worse? In this Ask Dr. Geier video, I offer four signs you have a serious knee injury that could require surgery.

Please note: I don't respond to questions and requests for specific medical advice left in the comments to my videos. I receive too many to keep up (several hundred per week), and legally I can't offer specific medical advice to people who aren't my patients (see below). If you want to ask a question about a specific injury you have, leave it in the comments below, and I might answer it in an upcoming Ask Dr. Geier video. If you need more detailed information on your injury, go to my Resources page: drdavidgeier.com/resources/

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SWELLING
If you have a knee that is much more swollen than the opposite knee, especially if the swelling developed soon after you got hurt, then it could be a sign of structural damage. While a small amount of swelling could be normal or a sign of inflammation in the knee, a knee that is really swollen and much larger than the other knee could represent a fracture, torn ACL or other ligament or some other damaged structure.

INABILITY TO FULLY STRAIGHTEN YOUR KNEE
Pain can make it difficult for you to straighten your knee. But being unable to get your knee completely flat can be a sign of an injury like an ACL tear or meniscus tear.

LOCKING OF THE KNEE
Locking is a term orthopedic surgeons use to describe a knee that gets stuck in a certain position. Maybe you can straighten it to a certain point, but it gets stuck around 30 degrees short of fully straight. Or you can’t bend it past a certain point because something inside the knee is blocking it. Catching is a milder form of the same problem, where you can get to the point that the motion stops, but you can twist or rotate your knee past that point.

BUCKLING OR GIVING WAY
Having the tibia (shin bone) shift out from under the femur (thigh bone) usually represents an ACL injury. If your knee buckled during the traumatic injury and keeps happening in the days after the injury, you risk doing more damage to the other structures inside the knee.

This list is not comprehensive, so if you are concerned about your knee injury or knee pain, it never hurts to see your doctor or an orthopedic surgeon.