Rest: Keep your weight off the injured knee as much as possible. Ice: Place an ice pack on your knee for about 20 minutes, several times a day. Compression: Wrap your knee with a compression bandage to help reduce swelling. Elevation: Rest with your leg raised higher than your heart to decrease swelling.
Continuing to walk on the affected leg can aggravate your symptoms, making pain and stiffness worse in as little as a few days. Plus, suffering a torn meniscus may also increase your risk of complications, like developing osteoarthritis in that knee.
Avoid activities that aggravate your knee pain, especially any activity that causes you to twist, rotate or pivot your knee. If your pain is severe, using crutches can take pressure off your knee and promote healing. Ice. Ice can reduce knee pain and swelling.
Avoid positions and activities that place excessive pressure on knee until pain and swelling resolve. Problematic positions include squatting, pivoting, repetitive bending (eg, climbing stairs, rising from seated position, operating clutch and pedals), jogging, and swimming using the frog or whip kick.
Some exercises are too strenuous for people with meniscus tears. A person should not: do deep squats. do any exercise that involves pivoting or that otherwise twists the knee.
To avoid placing stress on the meniscus repair, do not bend your knee beyond 90 degrees (bent to a right angle). Brace and Crutches: Unless otherwise instructed by your doctor, use crutches when walking and bear weight as tolerated on the operated leg. Wear the post-operative brace for walking.
Yes. Although knee braces do not heal or treat your meniscus tear directly, they can provide extra support and stability for your knee while your meniscus injury heals. A good brace will protect your knee and take the pressure off your meniscus, allowing it to rest.
Your doctor may recommend the RICE regimen—rest, ice, compression, and elevation—to treat a meniscus tear. Resting your knee can help relieve your symptoms. Your doctor may suggest using a cane for a few weeks to keep weight off your knee and to stay away from physical activity that may have contributed to the injury.
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan is often used to diagnose meniscal injuries. The meniscus shows up as black on the MRI. Any tears appear as white lines. An MRI is 70 to 90 percent accurate in identifying whether the meniscus has been torn and how badly.
How soon you can return to work depends on your job. If you sit at work, you may be able to go back in 1 to 2 weeks. But if you are on your feet at work, it may take 4 to 6 weeks. If you are very physically active in your job, it may take 3 to 6 months.
Sleep on your back with the leg slightly elevated
This is especially important during the first few days after meniscus surgery. Keeping the leg elevated (but not bent!) encourages healthy circulation, which helps keep pain and swelling in check.
Range of motion may be limited due to pain, swelling, and/or mechanical limits from the tear. Daily activities such as walking up and down the stairs, walking down a hill, kneeling, and squatting are often made difficult due to increased pain in the knee.
Tears on the outer one-third of your meniscus can heal independently because this area has a rich blood supply, and blood cells can regenerate the meniscus tissue. However, if the tear is located on the inner two-thirds, the tear will not repair itself and will need to be surgically removed.
“You can live with a meniscus tear,” Dr. Parker says. “And it may heal on its own, or just not cause you problems.” However, you'll know pretty quickly when it is a problem.
For instance, if the meniscus tear is mild, which would be a Grade 1 or 2, you will most likely not need surgery. However, if your injury is more severe at a Grade 3 rating, then your doctor might discuss your surgery options.
Too much cold will keep your injury in the same state - slowing down the healing process. This can sometimes make chronic injuries linger even longer. Heat (Circulation Boost) should be used when you suffer from a chronic, tight or stiff meniscus injury and after you reduce swelling, pain and inflammation with cold.
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs)
Taking over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen or naproxen can help manage pain and inflammation associated with meniscus tears since they are anti-inflammatory drugs that work by blocking certain enzymes in the body responsible for causing inflammation.
Magnesium could be used for in situ meniscal repair due to the potential capacity of magnesium to recruit endogenous stem cells and promote synthesis of fibrocartilaginous matrix.
Consistent use of vitamin D supplements over 4 years of 400 IU at least once a week was associated with significantly less worsening of cartilage, meniscus and bone marrow abnormalities (odds ratio range: 0.40 to 0.56, p<0.05).
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.